Knowledge and perception of the practice of kangaroo mother care among women attending antenatal clinic

Abstract

PurposeThis study was carried out to determine the knowledge, attitude, and perception of mothers attending antenatal clinics towards kangaroo mother care practices. Designand methods: A cross-sectional, descriptive research design was adopted. The convenience sampling technique was used to select 207 respondents attending the antenatal clinic at a secondary healthcare facility. A structured questionnaire was used for data collection and descriptive statistics was adopted to analyze the data collected. ResultsThis study revealed that only 84 (41%) of the respondents had heard about kangaroo mother care while only 80 (39%) of respondents knew that kangaroo mother care was a method of providing thermal care for newborns. Also, findings showed that mothers presented positive attitudes toward skin-to-skin contact and the most perceived barrier to the practice of skin-to-skin contact was that it was time-consuming. ConclusionThis study showed that mothers who practiced skin-to-skin contact after seeing other mothers doing it and they feel that it cannot harm the pre-term babies or low birth babies. In that case, mothers should be given adequate health education about the practice. They should also be encouraged to allow their spouse or relatives to assist in carrying out the practice to relieve them or if they do not have adequate time, due to other competing priorities.