The barriers to implementing skin-to-skin contact between mother and newborn at birth from the point of view of midwives working in Yasuj hospitals

Skin-to-skin contact between mother and newborn is an important care in maternal and newborn health and promoting breastfeeding. This study aimed to determine the barriers of implementing the SCC guideline at birth from the perspective of midwives working in hospitals in Yasuj.Iran.

A descriptive-cross-sectional study was conducted with the participation of 88 midwives working in two hospitals of Yasuj 2024. Data were collected through interviews with a questionnaire consisting of two sections of demographic characteristics and questions related to seven areas of barriers to implementing the SCC guideline. Its validity was measured with the Content Validity Index. Data analyzed with descriptive statistics including frequency tables, central and dispersion indices and using SPSS version 16 software.

The age of the midwives was at least 25 and at most 59 years with a mean of 35.91 ± 8.482 and the work experience in the maternity hospital was at least 1 and at most 26 years with a mean of 6.672 ± 6.86. From the perspective of 48 people (54.5%), SCC in the hospital was not performed according to the guidelines. The frequency of midwives' knowledge barriers was 4 (4.5%), human resource barriers was 35 (39.8%), environmental barriers was 4 (4.5%), content barriers of the guideline was 2 (2.3%), maternal and newborn safety barriers were 15 (17%), cultural barriers were 5 (5.7%), and managerial and supervisory barriers were 17 (19.3%).

The main barriers were human resource, managerial and supervisory, maternal and newborn safety respectively.