Objective: The aim is to determine Midwifery students’ assessments of postpartum hemorrhage quantity through visual manual.
Materials and Method: Descriptive research was carried out with students of midwifery department of a university in June, 2016.. Data were collected in a "Guideline for Visual Estimation of Blood Loss in Obstetric Bleeding". Guides with 9 actual bleeding images were asked to estimate the amount of bleeding in the photo by giving them to the students in print quality and without specifying quantities. Percentage, mean, standard deviation and median were used in the analysis of the data. The Wilcoxon signed Rank test was used in one sample from non-parametric tests because the data did not fit the normal distribution.
Findings: The average age of the participants was 22.64 ± 1.44 (min: 21 max: 29). It was determined that students did not make a statistically significant difference (p> 0.05) in estimating that hygienic women's pads with 30 ml blood, hygienic women's pads with 100 ml blood and the kidney dish with 500 ml blood approached the correct amount of blood in the bath.
Results: The average age of the participants was 22.64(sd:1.44; min:21 max:29). It was detected that students were close to the actual figures in their estimations about the quantity of blood on sanitary napkins with 30 ml and 100 ml, and there was not a statistically significant difference between their estimations and actual figures (p>0.05). It was seen that they were close to the actual figure in their estimation about the quantity of blood in emesis basin with 500 ml, and there was not a statistically significant difference between their estimations and actual figures (p>0.05). It was determined that participants were not close to actual figures in their estimations about the quantity of blood on a small gauze patch with 10x10 dimensions and with 60 ml blood (p:0.014), on bed sheet with 250 ml blood (p:0.00), on a large gauze patch with 45x45 dimensions and with 350 ml blood (p:0.014), on the patient and the bed with 1000 ml blood (p:0.025), on the floor with 1500 ml blood spilt (p:0.00), and finally on the patient, the bed and the floor with 2000 ml blood (p:0.00). It was seen that there was a statistically significant difference between their estimations and actual figures.
Conclusion: In this research, it was seen that midwifery students were close to actual figures in their estimations about the quantity of blood on both sanitary napkins on visual manual. It can be concluded that as the quantity of bleeding increases, the divergence between actual quantity and the estimations increases, as well.