IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/jocnur/v28y2019i5-6p882-893.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Nursing knowledge of essential maternal and newborn care in a high‐mortality urban African setting: A cross‐sectional study

Author

Listed:
  • Georgina A. V. Murphy
  • David Gathara
  • Ann Mwaniki
  • Grace Nabea
  • Jacintah Mwachiro
  • Nancy Abuya
  • Mike English

Abstract

Aims To assess the knowledge of nurses of national guidelines for emergency maternity, routine newborn and small and sick newborn care in Nairobi County, Kenya. Background The vast majority of women deliver in a health facility in Nairobi. Yet, maternal and neonatal mortality remain high. Ensuring competency of health workers, in providing essential maternal and newborn interventions in health facilities will be key if further progress is to be made in reducing maternal and neonatal mortality in low‐resource settings. Design Cross‐sectional survey. Methods Questionnaires comprised of clinical vignettes and direct questions and were administered in 2015–2016 to nurses (n = 125 in 31 facilities) on duty in maternity and newborn units in public and private facilities providing 24/7 inpatient neonatal services. Composite knowledge scores were calculated and presented as weighted means. Associations were explored using regression. STROBE guidelines were followed. Results Nurses scored best for knowledge on active management of the mother after birth and immediate routine newborn care. Performance was worst for questions on infant resuscitation, checking signs and symptoms of sick newborns, and managing hypertension in pregnancy. Overall knowledge of care for sick newborns was particularly low (score 0.62 of 1). Across all areas assessed, nurses who had received training since qualifying performed better than those who had not. Poorly resourced and low case‐load facilities had lower average knowledge scores compared with better‐resourced and busier facilities. Conclusion Overall, we estimate that 31% of maternity patients, 3% of newborns and 39% of small and sick newborns are being cared for in an environment where nursing knowledge is very low (score

Suggested Citation

  • Georgina A. V. Murphy & David Gathara & Ann Mwaniki & Grace Nabea & Jacintah Mwachiro & Nancy Abuya & Mike English, 2019. "Nursing knowledge of essential maternal and newborn care in a high‐mortality urban African setting: A cross‐sectional study," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(5-6), pages 882-893, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:jocnur:v:28:y:2019:i:5-6:p:882-893
    DOI: 10.1111/jocn.14695
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.14695
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/jocn.14695?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:jocnur:v:28:y:2019:i:5-6:p:882-893. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1365-2702 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.