Nursing Observation Study

Quantifying nursing care delivered in newborn units and its adherence to practice guidelines aims to study and

to document nursing care provided to newborns admitted in newborn units so that we can have a better understanding of what tasks are done (or left undone) and how often. The findings will, we hope, feed into discussions on what needs to be done to support nursing care provision.

The study will take place in 6 hospitals providing 24/7 inpatient care to sick newborns within Nairobi County. The study will involve observing care given in up to 216 newborn babies for parts of one day during their admission to the newborn units with an aim to observe approximately equal numbers across the 6 hospitals. In each newborn unit, we will identify the different sections where newborns with different degrees of severity of illness are cared for. We will randomly select blocks of time of 12 hours spread out across day and night, weekend and weekday in each hospital to get a picture of care at all times. We will then observe 3 babies during each block of 12 hours observing what care it is possible for nurses to provide.

The study will observe how care is provided to newborns and document the actual care that is delivered to newborns. There are no study related interventions. We will be at the cot-side of the newborns whom we will be observing, by making observations of what is happening to newborns we will also observe other people who are not the focus of this study like care providers, who might include nurses, doctors and mothers. However, no information will be collected directly from the care providers.