TITLE:
Essential Maternal and Newborn Care Skills Training for Midwives: Their Impact on Reducing Maternal and Neonatal Mortalities in Kenya
AUTHORS:
Lucy Gitonga
KEYWORDS:
Continuing Professional Development (CPD), Maternal and Newborn Care
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology,
Vol.6 No.1,
January
27,
2016
ABSTRACT: Continuing professional development (CPD) continues to gain acceptance as
a model for health care professionals to engage in lifelong learning. Little is
known about how CPD participants put the experience and the new knowledge into
practice and whether it has impact on patient care outcomes. The primary
objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of CPD of Midwives on
Essential Maternal and Newborn care skills on maternal and neonatal mortality
in Embu County, Kenya. The study was
an interventional non-randomized pretest post test study design of midwives
from the participants of the 2010 ministry of health training on essential
maternal and newborn care skills. Sixty (60) midwives working in maternity unit
of Embu level five hospitals were targeted. The study was carried out in two
phases. Phase one involved environmental scanning of the factors that support
good performance in the workplace using a questionnaire. Phase two involved
evaluation of the impact by testing a hypotheses using data collected by use of
questionnaires, evaluation checklist and chart audit. Data were analyzed using
qualitative content analysis and presented using percentages and frequency
tables. Chi-square test and correlation analysis were used to show the association
between variables, which are midwives essential maternal and newborn care
skills and maternal and neonatal mortality. A chi-square χ2 = 14.143, df = 9 and a coefficient = 0.357. This coefficient
is less than p-value at Alpha 0.05 and therefore is not significant, proving
that the essential maternal and neonatal care skills do not contribute to reduction
in mortalities as such two variables are almost independent of each other,
whether one exists does not necessitate the existence of another nor does it
reduce maternal and neonatal mortalities in Kenya.