University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Health.The Northern Region of Ghana experiences serious maternal healthcare challenges, including the appropriate referral of pregnant women. To date, no study has investigated maternal referral services in the Northern region of Ghana. This study, therefore, investigated the practice and quality of maternal referrals in comprehensive emergency obstetric care facilities in the Northern Region of Ghana. This research employed a convergent parallel mixed method design. The study was conducted in all the nine districts that have district hospitals in the Northern region. Descriptive statistics were applied to the quantitative data using SPSS version 22 and Excel. NVivo version 12 was used to manage the qualitative data and content analysis was conducted. All the ten hospitals assessed lacked some essential equipment and human resource. Delivery bed ratio per 10,000 population was 0.08 whilst maternity bed ratio was 0.42. Some referral forms were filled partially. Tricycle, locally termed as “yellow yellow”, was the principal means of transport for referrals. Most of the women acknowledged that there was no communication between the health facilities during referral. The regional health directorate should collaborate with non-governmental organisations in the region and mobilise resources to improve the availability of essential equipment to enhance referral services
