Perceptions of Nurses Before Professional Midwifery in the First Level of Health Care

Abstract

Maternal death is a serious problem of global public health, in many of their cases associated with cultural factors and “uses and customs”, this in the different cultures where the problem arises. In Chiapas, Mexico, the approach to traditional midwives represent a concomitant element with aggravated births and need the establishment of professionalization programs for midwives. The objective of this study was to analyse the perceptions of nurses about the impact of professional midwifery on the first level of care A cross-sectional investigation was conducted, showing n=100 participants. The results on the perceptions of nurses in the face of professional midwifery at the first level of care are ambiguous, on the one hand, they comprise the main objective of the program and express the motivation for the independent performance of prenatal consulting, consider that a high impact would be achieved in the contribution to the reduction of maternal death. However, their perception of the strategy of boosting professional midwifery in the State of Chiapas is not entirely positive since 28% regard it as an imposition, others as an irrelevant strategy and 6% refer that these functions are the responsibility of those who hold the code of license in nursing and obstetrics. Adding difficulties that limit the effective performance of comprehensive care to women in pregnancy, childbirth, and low risk postpartum, highlighting little support from managers, lack of training, lack of inputs, complications of the binomial and medical apathy