Abstract:
Background: Family planning counseling is a continuous process that a counselor provides to
help clients and groups of people make and arrive at informed choices about the size of their
family. Poor-quality family planning counseling has its own role in the low rates of contraceptive
continuation in Ethiopia. However, little is known about the quality of family planning counseling
services in Ethiopia.
Objective: To assess the quality of family planning counseling service and associated factors
among women visiting the family planning unit of public health centers at Sebata town, Oromia,
Ethiopia, 2022.
Methods: A facility-based cross-sectional study supplemented with a qualitative study design was
conducted among clients attending family planning from August 1 to September 30, 2022. A
systematic random sampling technique was used to recruit 384 study participants. The exit
interview, observational checklist, key informant interview, and facility audit were used to collect
the data, finally the quality of counseling service were measured by Method Information Index
Plus which was collected by open data kit and exported to SPSS version 26 for analysis. To identify
factors, bivariable and multivariable ordinal logistic regression were used. Adjusted odds ratios
with 95% confidence intervals were calculated, and a p-value of <0.05 was used to set statistically
significant variables in the multivariable analysis.
Result: According to the current finding 118 (30.7%) received higher-quality counseling. The
study revealed that using long-acting methods (AOR: 0.42; 95% CI: 0.23, 0.75), maintaining the
privacy (AOR: 2.80, 95% CI: 1.55, 5.05) and asking partner's attitude toward FP methods (AOR:
2.04, 95% CI: 1.19, 3.50) were factors associated with better quality of family planning counseling
service. Findings from a qualitative study were discussed under five themes to explore barriers to
quality of family planning counseling service.
Conclusion: This study findings provision of higher quality family planning counseling service
of Sebeta town public health centers was low. using long-acting methods, maintaining privacy,
asking partner's attitude toward FP methods were found significantly associated with better quality
of family planning counseling services. Therefore, it is necessary to pay greater attention to the
factors that were identified and recommended for action by stakeholders in order to improve
the quality of FP counseling
