The Importance of Skin-to-Skin Contact for Newborns: A Study

This report critically examines skin-to-skin contact (SSC) between newborns and mothers as a standard of care, highlighting its benefits and the problems associated with its lack of implementation in hospitals. It addresses issues such as the lack of trained healthcare staff, disinterest among doctors and nurses, and concerns over child protection. The report suggests raising awareness, setting standard guidelines, providing training, and allowing family involvement to promote SSC. Initiatives include developing guidelines, communicating SSC policies, and offering antenatal counseling. The importance of educating nurses, doctors, and mothers about SSC's benefits and consequences is emphasized, concluding that SSC is a valuable practice that should be promoted in every hospital to improve child development and patient outcomes. Desklib offers a platform to explore similar solved assignments and study resources.

Running head: SKIN TO SKIN CONTACT OF NEWBORN WITH THEIR MOTHER.
Study On Skin to Skin Contact of Newborn as Standard of Care Without Risk Factors.
Name of Student:
Name of University:
Date:

1
Introduction
The aim of the project is to critically examine the evidence-based practice of skin to skin
contact. Skin to skin contact of newborn babies with their mother is standard of care that needs to
be implemented in every hospital without risk factors. The project deals with problem-related
with avoiding SSC and several issues that arises due to failure in implementation of skin to skin
contact. Further, many initiative steps are highlighted to promote SSC in every hospital. To
encounter these problems various suggestions and educational need is also delivered to get better
patient outcome.
Problem Statement
The major problem of today’s health care sector is ignorance of skin to skin contact of
newborn babies with their mother. The obstetrician often instructs nurses to take the babies in a
warmer environment to perform assessments rather than giving to their mother. However, SSC
should perform soon after delivery (Chan,Valsangkar, Kajeepeta, Boundy & Wall, 2016). Many
hospitals do not have any specific guideline to include SSC as effective approach and if some
have, the obstetrician doctors and nurse are unproductive in taking an initiative to monitor it as
because they concentrate more on completing the formalities (Moore, Bergman, Anderson &
Medley, 2016). The problem is significant as because SSC encourages newborn physiological
stability and help in establishing infant sleep (Ludington-Hoe, 2015). Thus, the problems need to
be addressed and improvised.
Raised Issue Related to The Problems
There are several issue that arrived by ignorance of skin to skin contact of infant with
their maternal mother. There is lack of trained nurses and health care staffs to conduct SSC. In-

2
spite of standard norms put by the hospital, the nurses do not follow, or some of them are not
even aware of it, and they generally monitor their own process (Phillips, 2013). Disinterest is
also noticed in several doctors and nurses to follow the standard norms to perform SSC.
(Stevens, Schmied, Burns, & Dahlen, 2014). OB Doctors are not in agreement to implement SSC
as a standard of care in their hospital. It is known that recommended time for SSC is about an
hour, and this calls for team cooperation; however, nurses are not sensitized to the concept of
SSC (Alenchery et al., 2018). Other issue is presence of less number of health care staff in each
labor room which arises concern over protection of child. Research also say that due to lack of
SSC child development may get highly affected (Feldman, Rosenthal & Eidelman, 2014).
Suggestions
To improve the working environment, quality of care and patient outcome, some of the
suggestion related to SSC are as follows:
 Awareness about the benefit of SSC should be communicated to nurses and obstetrician.
 Standard guideline for nurses and doctors should be set to perform SSC efficiently.
 Both obstetrician and nurse shall be given training to encourage SSC.
 Family member should be allowed to get into labor room, as this might assist in
establishing SSC (KoopmanCallaghan‐Koru Alaofin, Argani, & Farzin, 2016).
Initiatives
To promote SSC in hospital and to spread awareness about its proper implementation,
some initiative that needs to be taken are as follows:
 Group of experience nurse shall be encouraged to develop guidelines to promote standard
care for newborn through implementing SSC.

3
 Written SSC policy will be communicated among all the staff members, nurses and
doctors.
 Training by mean of audio-visual interaction shall be given to comprehend the new
guideline.
 Training will be given all both nurse and obstetrician in order to develop skill for
execution of SSC.
 Antenatal counselling about the benefit and step to follow to establish SSC would be
initiated through sessions and handouts (Armbrust et al., 2016).
Education Need for SSC
SSC being the integral part of practice in for care of newborn there is need to implement
SSC with standard rules, there is a need to educate the nurses and doctors and even the mother
regarding the importance and process of establishing SSC. The women need to know the harmful
consequences of ignorance of SSC faced by the child (Lumbiganon et al., 2016). Apart from this,
the nurses should be educated and guided to follow the rules for proper establishment of SSC. If
such things are supported by the hospital and doctors, there will be great advantageous impact on
quality of care of child as well as patient outcome will be improvised.
Conclusion
Lastly, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that SSC is the valuable care given
to child at the time of birth without any risk factors. However, its application is far from optimal
level. Many guidelines need to be followed by the nursing staff and doctors to follow the rule
strictly. As SSC has several benefits in child development hence, it should be promoted in every
hospital and quality knowledge should be communicated to every staffs and nurse regarding
SSC.

4

5
References
Alenchery, A. J., Thoppil, J., Britto, C. D., de Onis, J. V., Fernandez, L., & Rao, P. S. (2018).
Barriers and enablers to skin-to-skin contact at birth in healthy neonates-a qualitative
study. BMC pediatrics, 18(1), 48. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1186/s12887-018-
1033-y
Armbrust, R., Hinkson, L., von Weizsäcker, K., & Henrich, W. (2016). The Charité cesarean
birth: a family orientated approach of cesarean section. The Journal of Maternal-Fetal &
Neonatal Medicine, 29(1), 163-168. Retrieved from
https://doi.org/10.3109/14767058.2014.991917
Chan, G. J., Valsangkar, B., Kajeepeta, S., Boundy, E. O., & Wall, S. (2016). What is kangaroo
mother care? Systematic review of the literature. Journal of global health, 6(1). Retrieved
from https://dx.doi.org/10.7189%2Fjogh.06.010701
Feldman, R., Rosenthal, Z., & Eidelman, A. I. (2014). Maternal-preterm skin-to-skin contact
enhances child physiologic organization and cognitive control across the first 10 years of
life. Biological psychiatry, 75(1), 56-64 Retrieved from
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2013.08.012
Koopman, I., Callaghan‐Koru, J. A., Alaofin, O., Argani, C. H., & Farzin, A. (2016). Early skin‐
to‐skin contact for healthy full‐term infants after vaginal and caesarean delivery: a
qualitative study on clinician perspectives. Journal of clinical nursing, 25(9-10), 1367-
1376. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.13227

6
Ludington-Hoe, S. M. (2015). Skin-to-skin contact: a comforting place with comfort
food. MCN: The American Journal of Maternal/Child Nursing, 40(6), 359-366. Retrieved
from doi: 10.1097/NMC.0000000000000178
Lumbiganon, P., Martis, R., Laopaiboon, M., Festin, M.R., Ho, J.J. and Hakimi, M., 2016.
Antenatal breastfeeding education for increasing breastfeeding duration. Cochrane
Database of Systematic Reviews, (12). Retrieved from
doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006425.pub4
Moore, E. R., Bergman, N., Anderson, G. C., & Medley, N. (2016). Early skin‐to‐skin contact
for mothers and their healthy newborn infants. Cochrane database of systematic Reviews,
(11). Retrieved from doi/10.1002/14651858.CD003519.pub4
Moran-Peters, J. A., Zauderer, C. R., Goldman, S., Baierlein, J., & Smith, A. E. (2014). A quality
improvement project focused on women's perceptions of skin-to-skin contact after
cesarean birth. Nursing for women's health, 18(4), 294-303. Retrieved from
https://doi.org/10.1111/1751-486X.12135
Phillips, R. (2013). The sacred hour: Uninterrupted skin-to-skin contact immediately after
birth. Newborn and Infant Nursing Reviews, 13(2), 67-72. Retrieved from
https://doi.org/10.1053/j.nainr.2013.04.001
Stevens, J., Schmied, V., Burns, E., & Dahlen, H. (2014). Immediate or early skin‐to‐skin
contact after a C aesarean section: a review of the literature. Maternal & child
nutrition, 10(4), 456-473. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1111/mcn.12128\