Background: Quality of care can be measured by the rate of use of beneficial and ineffective or deleterious practices.
Objective: To perform a survey of the use of maternal and perinatal care practices in public maternities of Uruguay, and to know the opinions and perspectives of the users concerning some of these practices.
Material and methods: Cross-sectional hospital based descriptive study. For the prevalence study, a questionnaire filled with data taken from hospital records and a women survey were used. For the opinion study, a women questionnaire during early postpartum period was done.
Results: 773 women from 12 hospitals were enrolled in the study. The rate of administration of corticosteroids in women with risk of preterm delivery was < or = 40%. Periconceptional folic acid administration, psychosocial support during labour, active management during the third stage of labour, and supine position of the newborn, showed rates of utilization lower than 35%. Episiotomy and perineal shaving showed rates of use higher than 50%.
Conclusions: Some evidence-based beneficial health care practices are still not routinely implemented in public hospitals. Ineffective and even harmful practices are still used.