preview

Skin To Skin Contact

Decent Essays

World Health Organization recommends that all healthy mothers and babies, regardless of feeding preference and method of birth, have uninterrupted skin-to-skin care beginning immediately after birth for at least an hour, and until after the first feeding, for breastfeeding women. It provides both the mother and the newborn with many short-term and long-term benefits. (See Figure 1) This practice should be the standard in healthcare due to its many benefits. To implement this evidence-based practice, health professionals and patients involved in the perinatal period should be trained in the practice of skin-to-skin contact in immediate postpartum.
Mothers and babies have a physiological need to be together at the moment of birth and during the …show more content…

Educational lectures should be mandatory, and offered several times, on different shifts, to reach all nurses of a maternity unit. Web-based communications could also be used to reduce the barriers to participation and optimize this care in clinical practice. (Crenshaw, 2014)
An educational tool on early skin-to-skin contact should be provided to families to promote patient education. The education on skin-to-skin contact should begin during pregnancy because it encourages mothers to perform early skin-to-skin contact and should be continued after birth and during the hospitalization period (Bigelow et al., 2014).
Conclusion

Evidence has shown what mothers and newborns need after birth, each other. There are many opportunities for skin-to-skin care and breastfeeding. Nurses and healthcare professionals must support the physiological need that mothers and newborns have for each other after the birthing process. It is crucial that the nurses recognize the short- and long­term health benefits for the mothers and newborns that result from skin-to-skin care. Therefore, as healthcare professionals it is important to educate the patients and prevent separation of a mother and her newborn as a healthy birth

Get Access