A greater nurse and midwife density protects against infant mortality globally.

Publisher: W.B. Saunders Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 8607529 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1532-8449 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 08825963 NLM ISO Abbreviation: J Pediatr Nurs Subsets: MEDLINE

Publication: 1989- : Philadelphia, Pa : W.B. Saunders
Original Publication: [Orlando, FL] : Grune & Stratton, [c1986-

Infant Mortality* ; Global Health* ; Midwifery*; Humans ; Infant ; Female ; Infant, Newborn ; Male ; Nurse Midwives/statistics & numerical data ; Pregnancy ; Developing Countries

Purpose: As the largest profession within the health care workforce, nurses and midwives play a critical role in the health and wellness of families especially children and infants. This study suggests those countries with higher nurse and midwife densities (NMD) had lower infant mortality rates (IMR).
Design and Methods: With affluence, low birthweight and urbanization incorporated as potential confounders, this ecological study analyzed the correlations between NMD and IMR with scatterplots, Pearson r correlation, partial correlation and multiple linear regression models. Countries were also grouped for analysing and comparing their Pearson's coefficients.
Results: NMD inversely and significantly correlated to IMR worldwide. This relationship remained significant independent of the confounders, economic affluence, low birthweight and urbanization. Explaining 57.19% of IMR variance, high NMD was implicated in significantly reducing the IMR.
Practice Implications: Countries with high NMD had lower IMRs both worldwide and with special regard to developing countries. This may interest healthcare policymakers, especially those from developing countries, to consider the impacts of global nursing and midwifery staffing shortages. Nurses and midwives are the group of healthcare professionals who spend most with infants and their carers. This may be another alert for the health authorities to extend nurses and midwives' practice scope for promoting infant health.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors report no actual or potential conflicts of interests.
(Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Keywords: Child mortality; Infant mortality rate; Low birthweight; Nurse and midwife density; The number of nurses and midwives

Date Created: 20240413 Date Completed: 20240706 Latest Revision: 20240706

20240706

10.1016/j.pedn.2024.04.004

38614819