Broken Appointments in Maternal Care Unit in Primary Care Centers, Riyadh City, Saudi Arabia: Reason and Solutions

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION3

Statement of Problem4

Research Objectives6

Research Questions6

Significance of the Study7

Definitions of Key Terms8

Delimitations of the Study8

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW10

Maternal Care during Pregnancy and Delivery of Child in Saudi Arabia10

Reasons of Broken Appointments in Maternal Care in Primary Care Centres12

Consequences and Factors Associated Missed Appointments in Maternal Care14

Socio-Demographics Factors Impacting Broken Appointments in Maternal Care16

Handling Broken Appointments in Maternal Care in Primary Care Centres17

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY19

Research Method and Design19

Research Participants19

Data Collection and Instrument20

Data Treatment and Analysis20

REFERENCES21

APPENDIX24

Questionnaire24

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

The prevalence of broken clinic appointments, also usually refers to the no-shows, missed appointments and non-attendance, has been emerging as the growing problem in the primary care centers across the globe. A plethora of the empirical studies reported that when a patient is failed to keep the scheduled clinical appointments, it does not only lead to the severe health consequences of the patient's health, but also jeopardize the all kinds of practices ranging from maternal practice clinics to general practice clinics (Perron et al., 2010; Kalb et al., 2012; Paige & Mansell, 2012). In some medical cases, such as maternity care of women and through its process encompassing the planning, parental and postnatal care, the broken appointments pose severe health care consequences for the women in both pre and post pregnancy, since pregnancy causes hormonal changes that require the women to regularly access maternal care in primary care centers or they would eventually put themselves at an increased risk of condition called “pregnancy gingivitis” that causes periodontal disease and for that matter tender gums that bleed easily (Norris et al., 2012; Murphy et al., 2012; Khan et al., 2012). Irrespective of the alarming consequences, thousands of the patients every year reported to miss their appointments in maternity care unit in primary care settings (Ootes, Buijze & Ring, 2012). While the international rates of the broken clinical appointment significantly vary according to the type and practices of clinical settings of maternal care unit as well as entire primary care centers along with the fact that rates varying among the countries, there is alarming signal that patients are broking or missing appointments ranging from the rates of 2% to 30%, with higher rates pertaining to the psychiatric (Perron et al., 2010) and maternity care (Alhamad, 2013).

Despite these facts, there is still notable gap in the available literature pertaining to understanding that why patients miss the appointments or which categories of the patients miss appointments (Ootes, Buijze & Ring, 2012). On one hand, researchers critically argued on the vast multitude of reasons include the socio-demographics of the people where certain people are deemed as vulnerable group with multiple health problems as well as difficult lives to be the reason of the broken appointments n the maternal care. On the other hand, researchers argued that people that miss appointments or fail to attend their scheduled appointments are considered as nuisances since they are not only causing the cost to the health system ...