Clinical audit of neonatal care in Assiut Women's Health Hospital, Egypt

Abstract

Background: The current study aims to auditing the current care of healthy full term newborns in the delivery room and identify the gap between the current practice and ideal practice in Assiut Women's Health Hospital, Egypt.Methods: The current study was a clinical audit carried out in Assiut Woman Health Hospital, in the period from 1 September 2016 to 28 February 2017.The study included all newborns delivered in the delivery word of gestational age after 37 week. We excluded all Preterm babies, those with congenital anomalies, pregnant women with medical disorders and multiple pregnancies. In the present work all data was collected prospectively through direct personal patient contact, direct observation of care givers, patient interactions and attitudes, from the clinical records and then recording the data in special check sheet. All basic criteria of the study participants as age, parity, gestational age at delivery and type of delivery were obtained. The neonatal gender, weight, heart rate and respiratory rate were checked. Audit criteria were selected according to the WHO 2015 and AAP 2010-2015 guidelines.Results: The study included 800 women; the mean age of the women was 26.52±5.70 years. The mean parity was 1.78±1.85. The mean gestational age at delivery was 38.81±0.96 weeks. As regard the type of delivery, 54.1% of women were delivered by cesarean section. Calling neonatologists occurred in 67.9% of deliveries. The mean birth weight was 3.17±0.39 kilograms. Nearly half of them (52%) were males.Conclusions: Application of the guidelines of the neonatal handling is important for optimum care to the neonates. Re-audit the steps of the handling is important to discuss whether practice has improved or not in our tertiary hospital.