KNOWLEDGE ONESSENTIAL NEWBORN CARE AMONG POST NATAL MOTHERS
The birth of the baby is one of the wondrous moments in their life. A newborn is a continuum of foetal life and an important transient time to adopt extrauterine life. Essential Newborn care refers to the care provided by the mother or caregiver regarding breastfeeding, care o cord and eyes, maintaining body temperature, immunization, and controllingthe infection.Objectives: To assessthe knowledge level of postnatal mothers regarding Essential Newborn Care. Materials and methods: A non-experimental descriptive study was conducted in a selected hospital, Idukki to assess the knowledge of post-natal mothers regarding essential newborn care. A total of 50 post-natal mothers were selected with a non-probability convenience sampling technique. A quantitative research approach was used in this study. A self-structured questionnaire was used to gather the data, and appropriate statistics were performed to analyse the data. Results: The data results revealed that 50% of samples are in the age group of 19-27 yrs. and 50% were 28-36 years of age. The majority of the samples(72%) were Christians. Half of the samples(58%) were graduates and 22% were postgraduates. Concerning the level of knowledge, 10% of them had poor, 60% had average and 22% had good knowledge regarding essential newborn care.