Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Nurses Need Better Education About Maternal Mortality To Help New Moms, Survey Finds
NPR and ProPublica: Many Nurses Lack Knowledge Of Health Risks To Mothers After Childbirth
In recent months, mothers who nearly died in the hours and days after giving birth have repeatedly told ProPublica and NPR that their doctors and nurses were often slow to recognize the warning signs that their bodies weren't healing properly. A study published Tuesday in MCN: The American Journal of Maternal/Child Nursing substantiates some of those concerns. Researchers surveyed 372 postpartum nurses nationwide and found that many of them were ill-informed about the dangers mothers face after giving birth. (Martin and Montagne, 8/17)
The New York Times: Working To Close The Breast-Feeding Gap
“When your mother hasn’t breast-fed, it’s hard to get that support to breast-feed your own child,” Dr. McKinney said. “This is where health care providers have the opportunity to step in.” ... She was the lead author of a National Institutes of Health community study published last summer in Pediatrics, which found that the newborns of African-American women were nine times more likely than the babies of white mothers to be given formula in hospitals – a factor the researchers considered a significant contributor to the entrenched disparity in breast-feeding rates between black, white and Hispanic mothers. (Miller, 8/17)
NPR: Sepsis Risk For Newborns Reduced By Probiotic Bacteria
Feeding babies the microbes dramatically reduces the risk newborns will develop sepsis, scientists report Wednesday in the journal Nature. Sepsis is a top killer of newborns worldwide. Each year more than 600,000 babies die of the blood infections, which can strike very quickly. (Doucleff, 8/16)
