Abstract:
Background: Essential newborn care is the fundamental care that all newborns receive in the
delivery room from trained professionals in the first few hours of their lives to ensure their
survival and health. Millions of children die within the first month of life from diseases and
disorders caused by a lack of professional care in the early stages of life. There are few studies in
Ethiopia that measure a baby's vital signs, and the majority of those that were completed used
subjective methods. This study uses an observational technique using a standard checklist to
examine the practice of essential newborn care and its associated factors.
Objective: To assess essential newborn care practice and associated factors among obstetric care
providers in public hospitals of Gamo, Gofa and Wolayta zones, southern Ethiopia.
Methods: A facility-based cross-sectional study was conducted from May 15 to June 30, 2022. A
simple random sampling technique was used to select study participants. The survey responses
were entered into Epidata version 4.6 and exported to statistical packages for social science
version 25 for analysis. Descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression analysis were
employed. The odds ratio and 95% confidence intervals with p-value of <0.05 were computed to
identify factors associated with essential newborn care practice.
Results: The overall magnitude of good essential newborn care practice among obstetric care
providers was 53.5% (95% CI = 49, 58). Interested on working in delivery room (AOR=3.16,
95% CI=1.71,5.83), having no work load (AOR=2.96, 95% CI=1.78,4.49), received in-service
training (AOR=3.09, 95% CI=1.75,5.45), having supportive supervision (AOR=3.41, 95%
CI=1.25, 9.24), and having good knowledge on essential newborn care (AOR=3.04, 95%
CI=1.89,4.90) were significantly associated variables with the practice of essential newborn care.
Conclusion: The overall practice of essential newborn care in the study area was poor as
compared to most previous findings. Good practice of essential newborn care was affected by
interest, workload, in-service training, supportive supervision, and knowledge. Therefore, training
staff and supportive supervision would always be there to motivate good workers.
