How well are pregnant women in Croatia informed about the oral glucose tolerance test?

INTRODUCTION Preanalytical errors still constitute the largest source of errors in laboratory work. Proper patient preparation and patient's knowledge about a particular procedure affects its accuracy and reliability. We hypothesized that most of pregnant women are not well enough informed about the proper procedure for the OGTT. The aims of this study were to investigate: (i) how well pregnant women are informed about the OGTT; (ii) the most common way to inform pregnant women about OGTT and (iii) whether pregnant women's level of knowledge about the OGTT differ regarding source of information. MATERIALS AND METHODS The anonymous questionnaire was conducted across the country in 23 Croatian primary and secondary healthcare centres. The questionnaire contained 9 questions on certain demographic data and familiarity with OGTT procedure. All 343 participants filled the questionnaire before the first blood draw. RESULTS 42% of the participants demonstrated high and 38% adequate level of knowledge about the OGTT procedure. Majority of participants were informed about the procedure by gynaecologist (56%). The level of knowledge differed among participants with different sources of information (P=0.030). Further analysis showed that the level of knowledge was lower in pregnant women having received information from their gynaecologist compared to pregnant women who received information from the laboratory staff. CONCLUSIONS In general, pregnant women are familiar with OGTT procedure, main source of information about the OGTT procedure is their gynaecologist, but the level of knowledge was higher in women who received information about the OGTT procedure from the laboratory staff.