Barriers in neonatal nurses’ kangaroo care practice: A systematic review

Abstract

Background: This review was carried out as a systematic review to examine the result of descriptive, cross-sectional and prospective design nursing studies on the barriers that cause nurses not to perform ‘Kangaroo Care’ in neonatal intensive care units. Materials and Methods: This study is a systematic review. For this purpose, 5 databases including PMC PubMed, Google Scholar, Science Direct, Web of Science and Wiley Online Library were searched by matching the keywords "barriers, kangaroo care, nicu, nurse".   All relevant English studies published in the literature between 2002 and 2022 were included in the evaluation. In order to reduce the risk of possible prejudice in the study, literature search, article selection, data extraction and evaluation of article quality were performed independently by one and two researchers. Results: In this study, a total of 6253 records were accessed as a result of the search of the databases. A total of 11 publications that met the inclusion criteria were included in the study and evaluated in terms of results. It was found that inadequate physical conditions, lack of personnel and equipment, fear of extinguishing intubated babies and damaging invasive intervention routes, and lack of time were the reasons for nurses' inability to perform kangaroo care in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Conclusions: Considering the results obtained from the studies, it has been determined that healthcare professionals and parents do not have sufficient knowledge about KC.  Also the physical environment is inadequate and care time is not enough. Lastly,  insufficient number of personnel, negatively effects kangaroo care. It is necessary to regulate the barriers by providing training to nurses and parents about KC, ensuring that the physical conditions are suitable, increasing the number of professionals working on the issue,