Background:Labour pain is an inevitable experience for parturient with choice for labour analgesia depending on awareness, mothers’ level of education, tradition, availability and cost of analgesic materials which is often limited by fear of complications that may arise.

Objectives:To determine the effect of a video demonstration on the willingness to receive epidural labour analgesia and to ascertain the factors responsible for the willingness in a Nigerian tertiary hospital.

Methods:All pregnant women attending booking clinics in 2 different units of our hospital were recruited into a randomised-controlled trial. The women were randomly allocated into either interventional (Group A) or control group (Group B). The pregnant women in the intervention group were shown a video demonstration on epidural labour analgesia in addition to distribution of information leaflets on the subject. There was no exposure of such information on epidural in the control group. Data obtained were entered into a predesigned sheet and analysed using SPSS version 16.

Results: Of the 199 expectant mothers that participated in the study, 95 (47.7%) were in Group A and 104 (52.3%) in Group B. The mean age in years of Group A (31.17±4.14) and Group B (31.05±5.00). In both groups, 69 (34.6%) patients have heard about labour analgesia out of which 22 (11.1%) were epidural. Level of education also had no effect on the awareness of epidural between the two groups (p=0.98). A higher proportion of Group A participants when compared to Group B participants were willing to receive epidural analgesia in their next labor and this difference was statistically significant (43.2% vs. 12.5%; p<0.0001).

Conclusions:Awareness of epidural labour analgesia is low but sensational programme through media has increased the willingness of mothers to request for epidural pain relief when next in labour. Adequate follow-up is necessary to actualize future epidural analgesia in parturients.