Menopausal Symptoms and Associated Factors Among Hospital Staff, Jimma University, Southwest Ethiopia, 2017

Abstract

Background: Reproductive aging in women is a dynamic process happening over a period of time ending in menopause. Menopause is a normal, natural event, defined as the final menstrual period (FMP), representing the permanent cessation of menses resulting from loss of ovarian follicular function, usually due to aging, but can be induced through a medical intervention & lifestyles such as using substances. Studies concerning menopause & its prevalence as well as severity were conducted in different parts of the world but most of them didn’t use MRS along with associated factors to investigate the occurrence of menopause symptoms. Objective: The main aim of this study was to determine prevalence, severity and associated factors of menopausal symptoms among staff of Jimma University Specialized Hospital Health professionals & administrative staff using MRS. Methods: Institution based cross sectional study was conducted from May to June 2017 on Jimma University Specialized Hospital health professionals and administrative staff. A total of 297 participants were selected by using computer generated simple random sampling after having sampling frame. Data were collected using Menopausal Rating Scale by interviewer administered structured questionnaire which was developed and released by WHO & adopted from it with some modifications considering the sociocultural aspect of the locality. A week before the time of data collection, the questionnaire was pretested. The collected data were entered into Epi Data Version 3.1 and exported to SPSS Version 21 for analysis. Bivariate analysis was performed followed by multivariate logistic regression so as to detect the association between variables. Results: Two hundred nighty seven subjects were included in the study. Of these, 294 were participated with the response rate of 98.9%. The mean age of participants was 27.74(SD=7.78) and the range falls between 18-58 years. One hundred fifty-seven (53.4 %) were married and 123 (41.8 %) were single. Majority of the respondents 112(38.1 %) had Bachelor degree and above followed by diploma 82 (27.9 %). More than one fourth of respondents 81(27.6%) earned a monthly income of 2501-4500 EthBirr and 73(24.8%) of the study participants had monthly income of 500-1000 EthBirr. From the total 115 (39.1%), 102(34.7%), and 43(14.6%) of the study participants were health care provider hospital staff, administrative hospital staff, and administrative university staff respectively. The current study revealed the overall prevalence of menopausal symptoms was 13.3%. The age range at which more menopausal symptoms observed was 27-30 years. Menstrual history (AOR=2.79, 95% CI= (1.155-6.743)) fetal loss experience (AOR=4.060, 95% CI=(1.053- 15.652)) and chronic disease (AOR=3.422, 95% CI=(1.176 -9.961)) were significantly associated with menopausal symptoms. Conclusion: The present study revealed that menopausal symptoms in developing nations started at early age. Irregular menstrual history, history of chronic disease and fetal loss experience were independent peridictors of menopausal symptoms. Taking this finding as a baseline data, large scale study is recommended.