To address high neonatal mortality (from birth to 28 days of life), baccalaureate-level nursing school and continuing education curricula in western Kenya include content on most common causes of death in the first week of life and the prevention and treatment of complications such as low birthweight, respiratory distress, and sepsis. Yet these topics do not address early-to-late postnatal mortality in well-appearing, term newborns discharged more than 24 h after delivery. In this study, we assessed curricula at a baccalaureate-level university nursing school and a tertiary hospital in western Kenya for content on home care of term newborns.
Researchers analysed secondary data using a rapid, focused ethnographic study of newborn care recommendations provided by nurse-midwives on the postnatal ward of a tertiary, publicly funded referral hospital and baccalaureate-level nursing school in western Kenya. Participants were recruited via purposive stratified judgment sampling. We conducted anonymous, semi-structured, open-ended interviews with nursing faculty, administrators, bedside staff, and one obstetric resident physician. Data were analysed using thematic analysis.