Factors affecting Kangaroo mother care Practice by Mothers Post-discharge; A systematic review
To review the available literature and bring to light the factors that affect the practice of Kangaroo Mother Care practice post-discharge by mothers. A systematic Review. This review was registered on PROSPERO (CRD42024546917). The reviewers identified reports from eight (8) databases [PubMed, SpringerLink, ScienceDirect, Scopus, ProQuest, Journal Storage (JSTOR), Web of Science, and EBSCOhost] and complemented by citation searches. This review was guided by the updated Preferred Reporting for Items of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. All duplicates were removed, and the quality of the studies were assessed. This was based on the PICO framework; Population (mothers of Low birth weight and preterm babies), Intervention or Context (discharged home), Comparison (not applicable) and Outcome (Kangaroo Mother Care practice) to arrive at the final included studies. This review included 23 cross-sectional studies and most of them came from Asia and Africa. The Socio-Ecological Model guided the reviewers in reporting the factors because they occur at various levels of society. These include individual, interpersonal, social and health system levels. Most of the factors were individual level; time of day, maternal age, knowledge, attitudes and doubts, maternal self-efficacy, maternal health issues and newborn-related issues. The interpersonal factors were partner-related. The social-related factors were social support, conflicting family responsibilities and socio-economic status. The Health System domain had factors as home visits and health setting utilization. Due to varied, multifaceted and multilevel nature of the factors identified, it is recommended that a path analysis of the various factors or interventional studies to targeting the factors at the various levels to improve kangaroo Mother Care practice at the community level.