Background: Therapeutic communication can assist nurses in achieving their goals. Effective nurse-patient communication can improve clinical outcomes and boosts patient satisfaction. But, there is an arming gap in therapeutic communication between nurses and patients in Ethiopia, which hinders the quality of nursing care. Some studies have been done on therapeutic and its barriers. Nevertheless, those studies did not fully address factors from different perspectives and were supported by nursing theories or models. Therefore, this study aimed to fill these gaps in the study setting. Methods: Institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 408 nurses working in public hospitals of Gamo zone from December 1, 2021, to January 30, 2022. Out of the six hospitals in the Gamo zone, three were selected by simple random sampling method. The data were collected by an interview-administered Open Data Kit survey tool and analyzed by SAS version 9.4. Descriptive statistics were computed and a generalized linear model was used to identify associated factors. Results: In this study, a standardized percentage of the maximum scale of therapeutic communication was 52.32%. Of the participants, 40.4% had high, 25.0% moderate, and 34.6% had low levels of therapeutic communication. Age, marital status, and qualification showed significant and positive relationships with the overall therapeutic communication. However, sex, working unit, nurse burnout, lack of empathy from nurses, challenging nursing tasks, lack of privacy, use of technical terms by nurses, lack of confidence in nurses, stress, unfamiliarity with the nursing job description, shortage of nurses, insufficient knowledge, lack of participation in decision making, and having contagious disease showed a significant and negative relationship with overall therapeutic communication. Conclusions: This finding indicates a gap in therapeutic communication between nurses and patients, and modifiable factors are identified. Therefore, giving opportunities for nurses to improve their qualifications, a special attention to nurses working in stressful areas, sharing the burden of nurses, involving nurses and patients in decision-making, and motivating and creating a positive working environment is vital to improving therapeutic communication.

Background: Stunting increases morbidity and mortality, hindering mental development and influencing cognitive capacity of children. This study aimed to examine the trends and determinants of stunting from infancy to middle adolescence in four countries: Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam.Methods: A 15-year longitudinal data on the trends of stunting were obtained from the Young Lives cohort study. The study includes 38,361 observations from 4 countries. A generalized mixed-effects model was adopted to estimate the determinant of stunting.Results: The patterns of stunting in children from aged 1 to 15 years have declined from an estimated 30% in 2002 to 20% in 2016. Stunting prevalence varied among four low- and middle-income countries with children in Ethiopia, India, and Peru being more stunted compared to children in Vietnam. The highest stunted was recorded in India and the lowest was recorded in Vietnam. In all four countries, the highest prevalence of severe stunting was observed in 2002 and moderate stunting was observed in 2006. Parents’ education level played a significance role in determining a child stunting. Children of uneducated parents were shown to be at a higher risk of stunting.Conclusion: Disparities of stunting were observed between- and within-country of four low- and middle-income with the highest prevalence recorded in low-income country. Child stunting is caused by factors related to child’s age, household wealth, household size, the mother’s and father’s education level, residence area and access to save drinking water.

Background: The growth curve has a significant role in understanding the growth trajectories over time and examining the mathematical relationship between the outcome variable and time. Study design: A longitudinal prospective cohort study. Methods: This study aimed to identify a nonlinear growth curve that best represents the growth trajectories in children’s physical growth from ages 1 to 15 years. The data were obtained from the Young Lives study conducted in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. Nonlinear growth curves were studied through the families of three-parameter nonlinear mixed-effects models. Results: The study examined the performances of different three-parameter nonlinear growth curves for the growth trajectory analysis, and the Logistic curve was chosen for the trajectory analysis. Gender and country differences had significant effects on the child’s growth. Females reached asymptotic height earlier and shorter than males. The mean height values at the end of the growth stage for children in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam were 171.78, 170.37, 171.30, 174.31cm, respectively. Children in Ethiopia approached adult height earlier than those in India but later than children in Peru. However, no significant growth change was observed between children in Ethiopia and Vietnam. This indicates that children in Ethiopia and Vietnam have no significant differences regarding approaching adult height. Conclusion: The study concludes that the Logistic curve was found to be the best growth curve to describe the growth trajectories. Children in all four countries exhibited different growth parameters.

Background: Anthropometric measurements of healthy children differ in different parts of the world due to the diverse ethnicity and cultural backgrounds of families. In longitudinal studies, appropriate modeling of repeated anthropometric measures can improve the understanding of patterns of change, determinants of patterns, and variations in patterns of change over time. The objective of this study was to examine the latent change in physical height of children in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam.Method: Longitudinal data of 6601 children aged 1 to 15 years were obtained from the Young Lives cohort study. The data were analyzed using a latent basis growth curve model.Results: The findings of the study revealed that the rates of growth did not remain constant across the time intervals, which indicates the nonlinearity of the growth trajectory over time. For instance, children had the highest rate of growth between age 1 and 5 years, then between age 8 and 12 years, and a low rate of growth was observed between age 12 and 15 years. At the first measurement occasion (age 1 year) females were 0.826 cm (p < 0.0001) times shorter than males. The mean height at one year of age ranged from 72.13 cm in Ethiopia to 72.62 cm in India. Children in India and Vietnam had higher mean height at age one year. However, no significant difference in mean height at age one year was found between Ethiopian and Peruvian children, ( $$p=0.914$$p=0.914 ). Peruvian and Vietnamese children grew at a faster rate, while Indian children grew at a slower rate than Ethiopian children.Conclusion: We found substantial latent growth variations among children in four low- and middle-income countries. The latent trajectories differed by gender and country. The outcomes of the study could aid in detecting inequalities in children's height growth.

Background. Utilizing antenatal care is one of the best ways to identify issues that are already present or could arise throughout pregnancy. Despite increased efforts to expand health services and antenatal care utilization, less is known regarding antenatal care disparities across different population segments. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess the degree of discrepancies between urban and rural Ethiopian pregnant womens use of antenatal care. Methods. A total sample of 3927 women who gave birth to living children between 2014 and 2019 was included in the study from the 2019 Ethiopia Mini Demographic and Health Survey. Negative binomial Poissons regression was adopted to analyze the data. Results. The majority of pregnant women (73.8) attend at least one antenatal care. Pregnant women in rural areas visited fewer number of antenatal care (68.36) than those in urban areas (90.1). Women with age range of 30-40 (IRR: 4.56, 95 CI: 1.07-19.34), women with attending incomplete primary education (IRR: 0.05, 95 CI: 0.02-0.12), women with attending complete primary education (IRR: 0.17, 95 CI: 0.07-0.42), women from middle-income households (IRR: 0.12, 95 CI: 0.06-0.24), women from richer household (IRR: 0.26, 95 CI: 0.14,0.5), women from the richest household (IRR: 0.45, 95 CI: 0.24-0.86), and pregnant women from rural areas (IRR: 0.615, 95: 0.56-0.67) were observed to be linked with the frequency of antenatal care visits. Conclusion. In Ethiopia, three-fourths of pregnant women attend at least one antenatal care. Place of residence, educational attainment, age in five years group, and wealth index for urban/rural were related to the frequency of antenatal care visits.