Nurses play a pivotal and varied role in many developing countries healthcare facilities, including providing prenatal education, labor and delivery, and ongoing newborn care. Most notably, it is nurses who are providing skilled attendance during birth, performing newborn resuscitation, initial newborn care, stabilization of at-risk and sick newborns, and determine the need for transfer to regional hospitals when necessary. In addition, nurses provide counseling to mothers about the importance of instituting kangaroo mother care and breast feeding as well as the special needs of low birth weight babies. Due to a shortage of physicians, especially in rural areas in developing countries, the nurses role is especially critical at district, sub-district areas, and villages. Often they perform critical care procedures and look after neonatal equipment.
There is no well-structured or standardized in-service training program in newborn care for nurses employed at above health facilities. The newborn care curriculum in the pre-service training course of the nurses is often scanty and theoretical. It is in this background that AIIMS took a lead in developing a high quality training module directed to clinical care practices on Newborn Nursing for facility based care building upon earlier package of essential newborn nursing of 2009. The module uses participatory learning methodology using self reading, self evaluation, demonstration, oral drill, role play, case discussion, group work, video and clinical skill demonstration. The entire package is also available on smart phone as a memory tool.
AIIMS team are indebted to the contributors for their outstanding efforts in providing technical inputs. Rotary International Focus Group Study Exchange programme between Rotary District 3010 (Delhi, India) and Rotary District 5360 (Calgary, Canada); support for workshops from UNICEF in September 2000; Laerdal Foundation, Norway in Jan 2003; DFID, British Council March 2004; WHO-SEARO 2007-08 and funds saved from continuing medical education of Doctors at AIIMS have sown the seed for this initiative. We would like to express our appreciation to team at Centre of Medical Education & Technology, AIIMS for developing video films. Special thanks to NIPI (Norway India Partnership Initiative) and UNICEF India office for the ongoing support for dissemination and capacity building of newborn nursing in India.
Prof. Ashok Deorari
WHO-CC for Training and Research in Newborn Care
Head, Division of Neonatology
All India Institute of Medical Sciences
New Delhi - 110 029
Newborn Week, 2014
AIIMS–WHO CC, has created videos illustrating the clinical procedure skills. This learning resource material is helpful for day to day clinical practice of health care professionals working in different setting. The contents of the videos and the practices illustrated have been peer reviewed and are evidence based. These are also available on YouTube for free download. This video library content is of global standard and is relevant for almost all countries world over. Suggestions are welcome for further improvement.
Care of baby at birth
