Survey of nulliparous parturients' attitudes regarding timing of epidural analgesia initiation

At our hospital, although >90% of nulliparous parturients eventually choose epidural analgesia for labor, many delay its initiation, experiencing considerable pain in the interim. This survey probed parturients' views about the timing of initiation of epidural labor analgesia.

Single-center, nonrandomized quantitative survey.

Labor and delivery suite in a large tertiary academic medical center.

Two hundred laboring nulliparous women admitted to the labor and delivery suite.

After their pain was relieved, parturients completed a questionnaire regarding their decision to request labor epidural analgesia.

A variety of factors regarding epidural use were assessed including the influence of painful contractions and of childbirth education class attendance on the decision to request epidural analgesia, and parturients' perception of the timing of epidural initiation on the progress and outcome of labor.

Analysis revealed that the desire of parturients to use epidural analgesia was increased from 27.9% before the onset of painful contractions to 48.2% after (p<0.01). Two-thirds of participants attended a non-physician taught childbirth education class. An antepartum plan to definitely forgo an epidural was 1.8 times more likely among women who attended a childbirth class when compared to those who did not attend. (OR=1.8; 95%CI:1.1-3.1; p=0.04). The most common views affecting decision-making were that epidural analgesia should not be administered "too early" (67.5%), and that it would slow labor (68.5%). Both of these views were more likely to be held if the parturient had attended a childbirth class, OR=2.0 (95%CI:1.1-3.8; p=0.03) and OR=2.0 (95% CI: 1.1 to 3.7; p=0.03), respectively.

We found that nulliparous parturients have misconceptions about epidurals, which are not supported by evidence-based medicine. Moreover, we found that attendance at childbirth education classes was associated with believing these misconceptions.