Background and Objective: The rate of cesarean section has been increasing in many regions of the world, including Iran in recent years. Therefore, the seventh axis of the health system development plan was dedicated to promoting natural childbirth at hospitals of Iran to improve the health of mothers and infants and reduce the rate of cesarean section. The present study aimed to analyze the policy gap of the health system development plan in the axis of promoting natural childbirth.
Material and Methods: This cross-sectional, descriptive-analytical study was conducted in 384 employees, medical staff and physicians in the field of education, health and treatment at Golestan University of Medical Sciences using simple random sampling. The data collection tool included a 35-item researcher-made questionnaire. After confirmation of its validity by supervisors and advisors, its reliability was obtained to be 0.84 by Cronbach's alpha test, indicating the reliability of the questionnaire. We distributed and collected the questionnaires in 6 months from the September to the December of 2020, and analyzed data using SPSS 22.
Results: In the seventh axis of the health system development plan, there was a gap of
-0.004 between the current and desired status, indicating that the gap between the current and desired status was close to the center axis and in the field of cooperation in the statistical population of the study.
Conclusion: Implementation of a plan to promote natural childbirth was effective in reducing the rate of cesarean section and encouraging pregnant mothers to give natural childbirth but the effectiveness was not enough to achieve the goals of the seventh axis of the plan. Therefore, the factors, which caused the lack of cooperation between the executive departments of the University of Medical Sciences, must be eliminated for creating effectiveness.