Maternal and Newborn Health Care Providers’ Preparedness for Provisions of Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care

Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care (EmONC) is a life-saving approach for mother and newborn experiencing complications during pregnancy, childbirth and or postpartum period. Like other developing countries, Ethiopia has high maternal and neonatal mortality (353/100,000 live births and 28/1000 live births respectively by 2015) where majority of them are due to lack of timely, effective, and accessible EmONC services. Even though Addis Ababa, Harar and Dire Dawa have met the WHO minimum requirements of EmONC service in terms of Availability and Accessibility unlike other regions, the report shows that the quality of care provided was highly compromised and mainly associated with poor providers’ competence. A cross-sectional study design was employed in purposively selected health care facilities in Dire Dawa city to assess providers’ level of knowledge, skills and confidence for provision of quality EmONC. The study used self-administered standardized questionnaire. Information letters, consent forms and questionnaires was handled to potential participants by research assistants. Data was coded, cleaned and entered using Epi Info 7 (7.0.9.34) and analyzed using SPSS version 20 for descriptive and inferential statistics. The finding of this study reveals that, out of 52 maternal and newborn health care providers filling questionnaires, majority (67.35%) of providers were untrained, where large numbers (38.5%) were reported from Health centers. Forty-five (86.04%) were reported of having sufficient knowledge of EmONC; while 31 (59.4%) and 46 (88.45%) reported of having adequate skills and confidence of performing major EmONC procedures, respectively. In conclusion, Even though there is a significant variation based on clinicians’ place of work and year of work experience, providers’ knowledge, skills and confidence were adequate. But, gaps in trained and specialized MNCPs were highly contributing to lack of improvements in quality of EmONC in Dire Dawa. Thus, the findings bear considerable implications for policy and local priorities