The problems faced by the mothers from two different cultures and cultural practices in infant care

Abstract

One of the periods in which traditional cultural practices are used intensively is during infancy. Some cultural practice applications for infants are extremely dangerous and can cause sickness in the baby, injuries, infections, and sequelae, even leading to future death. The objective of this study was to determine infant care problems faced by mothers from two different cultures. The population sample of this cross-sectional study consisted of Turkish and Syrian mothers who applied to Gaziantep province on December 25th and Şehitkamil Station Family Health Centers for any reason. Research data were collected between January 3rd, 2021 and January 5th, 2021 on the data collection form created by the researchers. In the evaluation of data, the number, percentage, mean and standard deviation values, which are descriptive statistics, were checked and the level of significance was accepted as p < 0.05. In this study, it was determined that mothers encountered mostly infant diarrhea (60.5%), gas pains (60.5%), and intertrigo (56.2%). The most common problems to which mothers applied practices during infant care were infant diarrhea (100%), fever (100%), putting the baby on easy sleep (99.5%), intertrigo (99.0%), and cough (99.0%). It was determined that the majority of mothers (71.4%) were involved in traditional infant cultural practices and this was significantly higher among Turkish mothers. Nurses, who are primary caregivers should be provided with the knowledge and skills about the importance of safe cultural care practices, both during their undergraduate education and throughout their vocational training.