Health quotient of puerperal women: a retrospective observational study

The health quotient (HQ) represents health awareness, health knowledge, and health ability. There are few studies on the HQ of women in the puerperium.

The convenience sampling method was used to select puerperium women.

A total of 245 questionnaires were valid. The average scores of health awareness, health knowledge, and health ability of women were 15.0 ± 1.6 (maximum: 18), 26.6 ± 7.9 (maximum: 42), and 25.8 ± 5.3 (maximum: 33) points, respectively. The residence of rural (OR = 3.489, p = 0.018) and whether the perinatal caregiver was a nanny (OR = 2.538, p = 0.019) were independently associated with health awareness. The occupational status of on-the-job (OR = 2.573, p = 0.010) and whether the payment method was medical insurance (OR = 0.233, p = 0.048) were independently associated with health knowledge. The place of residence (OR = 3.090, p = 0.040) and parity ≥ 2 births (OR = 4.324, p = 0.001) were independently associated with health ability. The structural equation model showed that the maternal health knowledge had direct effects on maternal health ability (β = 0.316, p = 0.011) and baby health ability (β = 0.327, p = 0.029), the baby health knowledge directly affected the baby health ability (β = 0.462, p < 0.001), and the health awareness directly affected the maternal health ability (β = 0.569, p = 0.006).

Puerperium women had sufficient health awareness, suboptimal health knowledge, and suboptimal health ability. The residence, perinatal caregiver, occupational status, payment method, and parity were risk factors of HQ.