2. Materials and methods 2.1 Study population A cross sectional study conducted at Abha Maternity Hospital in Abha, Saudi Arabia from December 2012 to April 2013 using self-administered structured questionnaires developed by the researchers to determine the perception, actual practices and barriers among health-care providers regarding non-pharmacological pain relief during labor. In addition, delivered women were interviewed in the postpartum unit. They were asked to rank their satisfaction level and clarify the extent they perceived non-pharmacological pain relief management. The study population consisted of a total sample of 88 health-care providers known as doctors, registered nurses and interns along with a total sample of 400 delivered women. An approval was taken from the King Khalid University’s Ethical Committee (REC # 2012-12-06) and the previously mentioned hospital to conduct the study. An informed written consent was secured from the participant. 2.2 Questionnaire interview Data were collected using a self-administered structured questionnaire which involved two major parts. The first part was designed to examine health-care providers’ perception related to non-pharmacological pain relief methods while the second part assessed women’s birth experiences. The first part was divided into four main sections: the first section includes demographic data, the second section includes four main categories of nonpharmacological pain relief, the third section of the questionnaire reflects the health-care provider’s opinion towards the benefits of non-pharmacological pain relief methods and finally, the fourth section of the questionnaire examines the subjects’ opinions regarding barriers for using non-pharmacological pain relief methods using the four point likert scale (agree, strongly agree, disagree, strongly disagree). 2.3 Data collection procedure All health-care providers were invited to share their experiences in a one-to-one interview format and were interviewed once in addition to the delivered women. A pilot study of ten intern nurses and forty delivered women was conducted during a two week period in order to examine the clarity of the questionnaire. The reliability coefficient was calculated and revealed Cronbach’s alpha for the first part of the questionnaire = 0.82 and 77.0 for the second part of the questionnaire indicating good internal consistency. This study is grounded by the goal attainment theory which was developed by Imogene King in the early 1960s. 2.4 Statistical analysis Data were coded, validated and analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Frequency, percentage, arithmetic mean for describing the central tendency of observation for each variable studied and standard deviation for the measure of dispersion of results around the mean were used to present the data. Values of P ≤ 0.05 were considered to indicate significant differences. 3. Results A total of 88 health-care providers known as doctors, registered nurses and interns along with 400 delivered women were included in the present study. 3.1 Demographic characteristics Table 1 shows demographic data as well as other characteristics of the study samples. The age of the 88 healthcare providers ranged between 20 to 50 years of age with a mean age of 27.17 + 8.66 years, 67 of which were aged between 20 and 30 years of age (76.1%). Staff ranks come in all medical categories and 40 are intern nurses (45.5%). The health-care providers’ experience in the field amounted to over 15 years and about 60 subjects had a five-year-working experience (68.2%). As for the 400 delivered women, the mean age was 28.08 + 5.68 years. The highest level of education recorded is university level in 160 (40.0%) cases. Three hundred thirty three respondents reported to having less than 5 children born to them (83.0%).