Nur Agustini

Comparison of Various Kangaroo Mother Care Carriers on Maternal Comfort: A Pilot Study

ABSTRACT Kangaroo mother care (KMC) is an evidence-based approach that has been scientifically proven to have a positive effect on mothers and infants. One of the barriers to performing KMC at home is the absence of a special KMC carrier. The most widely used KMC carriers in Indonesia are kangaroo pouch, thari, wrap and traditional wraps in the form of a long strip of fabric. This study’s aim was to compare the level of maternal comfort when performing KMC with three different KMC carriers. The study used crossover design involving 20 mothers with low birth weight (LBW) infants as responders, selected through a consecutive sampling method. Data were collected using a maternal comfort questionnaire, maternal anxiety questionnaire, and KMC observation sheet. The results of repeated analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that there was no significant difference in maternal comfort when performing KMC with any of three KMC carriers (maternal comfort p = .366, α = .05). Therefore, KMC can be implemented using any of the types of carriers including kangaroo pouch, thari wrap, and traditional wrap.

Improving Quality of Life on Cancer Patient by Implementation of Psychosexual Health Care

Introduction: The contribution of nurses in improving the quality of life of patients with cancer has caused them to have needs of getting knowledge and skills to provide services on psychosexual health care. Training on psychosexual health care has been developed, implemented and given to oncology nurses in Indonesia in order to fulfill the needs so that the nurses are able to provide psychosexual health care to cancer survivors and their spouse. Method: The training utilized a method of preand post-test evaluation to identify outcomes including changes of evaluation scores of knowledge, belief, practice, and self-efficacy of trainees before and after receiving psychosexual health care training. Result: The training has been implemented on 46 oncology nurses in Indonesia so that they can have knowledge, practice, belief and self-efficacy in providing psychosexual health care to patients with cancer and their spouse. After training and mentorship had been provided, there were significant changes on knowledge, belief and self-efficacy in providing psychosexual health care services to patients with cancer and their spouse; however, there were no significant changes on practices. Discussion: The training has become a standard nursing care for cancer in Indonesia and has provided scientific evidences that nurses have contribution in improving quality of life of patients with cancer by providing a comprehensive nursing care through implementation of psychosexual health care in their daily nursing care for patients with cancer and their spouse.