Pain during the labor active phase: the effect of walking.

UNLABELLED This study aimed to verify whether the distance walked is correlated with women's pain level throughout the active phase of labor. METHODOLOGY We realized an analytic, quasi-experimental intervention study. Study participants were 80 primiparous parturient women, who were admitted during spontaneous labor, with 37-42 weeks, at the start of the active phase. DATA ANALYSIS Spearman's correlation test. RESULTS the parturient women walked an average distance of 1,624 meters, 63.09% of the active phase of labor and during an average time of five hours. Pain scores increase along with the advance in cervical dilatation. However, we only found a significant positive correlation when 5cm of dilatation had been reached, that is, the more distance the participants walked, the higher the pain scores they reached.