[Practices in the care of the low-risk delivery in hospitals in southern Chile].

Background: A relevant component to achieve high quality of care is the implementation of evidence based practices.

Objective: To assess in two maternities in the South of Chile, the use of evidence based practices in labour and delivery care.

Patients And Methods: In two hospitals, 205 women after delivery were interviewed. Eleven forms of care were selected from the classification provided by the WHO Reproductive Health Library, four as beneficial forms of care and seven as forms of care likely to be harmful.

Results: Beneficial forms of care were used between 17 to 46% and forms likely to be harmful between 17 and 98%. No association among the use of the practices and some maternal characteristics, such as age, parity and years on school, were found. Women interpretation about benefits of the practices is not in agreement with the evidence provided by the trials.

Conclusions: A low adherence to evidence based practices was observed since some practices of proven benefit are poorly used and many practices likely to be harmful are highly used. There is a need to look for strategies aimed at the better use of evidences based practices considering among these strategies women empowerment.