engleski

Pregnancy – missed prevention and intervention opportunities in community health nursing

Attachment is a term used to describe a deep and lasting emotional relationship with another individual. It primarily designates emotion between a mother and her baby, but it is also inherent to life-long human behavior. It is characterized by a tendency to seek and maintain closeness with caring people in stressful situations. The feeling of safety that is generated through the mother-child relationship is the foundation for basic trust or distrust in relationships, and also affects children’s expectations concerning how the environment will respond to their needs. Development of attachment is to a large extent determined by the mother’s responsiveness to the child’s needs, compatibility of the mother and her child, the child’s temperament, the mother’s recollections of her childhood, and the supporting community. Good functioning of families is of great importance to all family members, especially pregnant women. The health care system supports pregnant women through the visiting nurse service that is in charge of preventive measures. Of all health professionals, the community health nurse is the only one who, visiting the home and family environment of a pregnant woman, has complete insight into the possible occurrence of risk factors for the development of maternal and child disorders. With this intervention, we can act preventively in order to preserve physical, mental and social well-being. The aim of this study was to determine discrepancy in the number of anticipated and performed preventive nursing visits to pregnant women in Croatia. The situation was analyzed at county (regional) and national level. The authors used the information on the health care of pregnant women, puerperal women and infants up to 12 months of age published in the Croatian Health Statistics Yearbooks and in reports on the natural change in the population by the Croatian Bureau of Statistics between 1995 and 2018. Study results showed the rate of nursing visits to pregnant women and to infants up to 12 months of age, as well as the difference in the number of nursing visits in the Republic of Croatia over a period of 23 years. During the observed period, there was a signifi cant drop in the total number of childbirths, as well as in the number of nursing visits to pregnant women, and the trend has continued. During the observed period, a mean of 42.1% of women went through their pregnancy without a single nursing visit, which means that an opportunity to provide such a vulnerable group with an important segment of social and professional support was lost. The potential opened by drop in the number of pregnant women to increase the scope of nursing visits to at least once per pregnancy, after the 16th week of pregnancy, remained unused. The number of visits to newborns and women in the puerperal period was on the rise, while visits to infants were oscillating with a slight downward trend. In conclusion, the opportunity created by drop in the number of pregnancies was not utilized to improve the scope of community nurse visits to at least once in pregnancy after week 16. Community health nursing for pregnant women failed to reach the desired health care standard.

visiting nurse ; pregnant women ; health care organization ; Croatia

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