Determinants of Essential Newborn Care Practice Among Nurses and Midwives Working at Public Health Facilities in Wolayta Zone, Southern Ethiopia: Observational Study

Background: Essential Newborn Care is the care given to the newborn infant following birth within the delivery room by skilled personnel. Immediate and proper essential newborn care provision is important for survival, growth and development of a newborn. In spite of its essentiality, most health care professionals do not practice recommendation of World Health Organization. Therefore, this study was aimed to assess magnitude and factors associated with essential newborn care practice among nurses and midwives working in maternal and child health case team at public health facilities of Wolayta Zone, Southern Ethiopia, 2019. Methods: Institution based cross sectional study design was conducted from March to October, 2019. Data was collected by using pretested self-administered questionnaire and observation check list. 36 public health facilities were selected by using simple random sampling technique from 73 health facilities. From these, all (218) nurses and midwives who were working in delivery unit from selected facilities were participated in the study. The collected data was entered into Epi data 3.02 and exported to SPSS version 22 for analysis. The result is presented by using frequency and proportions table. Statistical significance was declared at 95% CI, AOR and p-value ≤ 0.05 in the multivariate analysis in binary logistic regression. Result: Magnitude of good practice on essential newborn care was 44.4%. Getting in-service training (AOR=2.768, 95% CI:1.25, 6.13), availability of equipment (AOR=3.44, 95% CI: 1.64, 7.21), knowledge on essential newborn care (AOR=3.53, 95% CI: 1.75, 7.09), type of facility (AOR=0.23, 95% CI: 0.097, 0.55) and experience of working in delivery unit (AOR=2.582, 95% CI: 1.198,5.566) were factors significantly associated with proper practice of essential newborn care. Conclusion: The study participants had poor practice on some components of essential newborn care in the study area. The type of facility especially those working in health center had poor practice than those in hospital, availability of equipment and knowledge on essential newborn care were variables independently affecting proper practice of essential newborn care. Therefore; we recommend staff motivation; strengthening training, provision of continuous education, close supervision, providing required equipment and supplies to facility managers, MCH department head, zonal health department and Woreda health office and non-governmental organizations who were working on maternal and child health.