ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Glob. Women’s Health
Sec. Maternal Health
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fgwh.2025.1595266
This article is part of the Research TopicEmotionally-centred Perinatal Care, Practices and ExperiencesView all 12 articles
"We have been depriving them": Examining the Sense of Coherence of clinical staff as they implement skin-to-skin contact
Provisionally accepted
- 1Center for Breastfeeding, Healthy Children Project, Inc, Sandwich, United States
- 2Makerere University, Kampala, Central Region, Uganda
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Skin-to-skin contact (SSC) immediately after birth, where the newborn baby and mother remain together during the first hour after birth, has positive health effects on the dyad's physical and emotional well-being; however, implementation, the purview of the hospital's labor and birthing unit staff, has been a challenge in many settings.To investigate Antonovsky's salutogenic theory's sense of coherence (SOC) of birthing staff member's before and after implementing skin-to-skin contact immediately after birth in a regional referral hospital in Uganda. This qualitative study explored and analyzed before-and-after interviews of clinical staff regarding their experience of practice change to immediate, continuous, uninterrupted skin-to-skin contact for at least the first hour after birth. The semi-structured interviews took place at a regional referral hospital in Western Uganda. Using thematic analysis, the interviews were analyzed for the three components central to SOC: whether the proposed change in practice (pre-SSC intervention) and experience of the change in practice (post-intervention) was comprehensible, manageable and meaningful.Analysis indicated a high level of SOC before the intervention in relation to the meaningfulness and comprehensibility of SSC, with concerns about manageability. Analysis of post-intervention interviews indicated a high level of SOC for all three aspects.We postulate that a high level of sense of coherence for hospital staff both before and after an intervention may play a role in successfully implementing immediate, uninterrupted skin-to-skin contact in the first hour after birth. Skin-to-skin contact immediately after birth has life-long consequences for the emotional well-being of both mother and newborn.
Keywords: skin-to-skin contact1, saultogenesis2, meaningfulness3, relationships4, maternity care5
Received: 17 Mar 2025; Accepted: 04 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Brimdyr, Mbalinda, Blair and Cadwell. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kajsa Brimdyr, Center for Breastfeeding, Healthy Children Project, Inc, Sandwich, United States
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