Study location

The study was conducted at a tertiary health facility in Accra, Ghana. The participants were drawn from the post-natal clinic where post-partum women sought day care services. The women lived within the Accra Metropolis and were not on admission and their babies were also healthy. The context of the study attracts women from various parts of Ghana and this provided the opportunity to explore the experiences and perceptions of women from all the geographical areas in Ghana. Ghana has many ethnic groups and women may be socialized differently in pain expression and behaviour. As a lower middle income country, there is resource limitation within the clinical setting and this could hinder pain management [38]. Within the context of the study, labour pain and its management are not regularly discussed at the antenatal clinics. High workload and inadequate midwives reported in a previous study may contribute to this gap in care [39].