ASSESSMENT OF WOMEN ‘KNOWLEDGE REGARDING COMPLIANCE AND SAFETY OF ORAL CONTRACEPTIVE PILLS.

Background:- Most of Saudi women are using OCPs as a method of contraception.Failure rates of less than one percent have been reported among women who use OCPs effectively, with rates as high as nine percent in those who do not use pills consistently or correctly. Objectives:- to study the compliance with as well as knowledge regarding OCP among women attending King Faisal armed forces hospital at Khamis Mushait and Family and community department clinics at Ahad Rufaidah. Subjects and methods:- Cross-sectional study design was carried out among married Saudi women, aged over 18 years attending King Faisal armed forces hospital at Khamis Mushait and Family and community department clinics at Ahad Rufaidah, Southern Region, Saudi Arabia during November, 2016 and using OCPs for a period of more than 6 months.Simple random technique was applied to select all eligible women to complete a questionnaire to assess their Knowledge on adherence and safety of the oral contraceptive pill. A self-administered Arabic-questionnaire will be used for collection of data. Results:- Three hundreds women participated in the study. The age of 45.3% of them ranged between 30 and 39 years. Slightly less than half of them (47.3%) had Bachelor degree or above whereas 6.7% were less than intermediate school educated. About two-thirds of the participants (65%) understood that they needed totake an extra pill if they forgot to take one in less than 12hours. However, only 14%were aware that theyneeded to take an extra pill and use extra protection forthe next 7 days if they missed taking their OCP for morethan 12 hours. Majority of the participants were unawareof the correct action to take if they had experienceddiarrhea for more than 12 hours (93.7%), or vomited within 2hours of taking an OCP (88.7%). Less than one-fifth of the participants could recognize that smoking affects contraceptive use. However, majority of them (81.7%) have read the package insert inside OCPs packages. Overall, sufficient knowledge was reported among 22.7% of women. The commonest reported OCPs side effects were weight gain (56%), nausea (36.3%), tender breast (35.7%), and facial acne pimples and body hair (26.7%). Abnormal vaginal bleeding was significantly associated with years of OCPs use as it was more reported among those used OCPs foe less than one year compared with longer duration, p=0.031. Conclusion:- Majority of Saudi women using OCPs have insufficient knowledge of its correct use regarding missingpills, diarrhea and vomiting, and poor awareness of the impacts of smoking while using OCPs.Proper counseling and counseling on correct use of OCPs are recommended to raise their knowledge to limit unintended pregnancies and consequentlyimprovetheir health