Attitude and Awareness of Nurses About Rooming-in System

This study was done to examine the attitude and awareness of nurses about rooming-in for new mothers and their infants.

Data were collected from 462 nurses from 40 hospitals from August 10 to September 20, 2008 using a questionnaire, and the collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test and ANOVA.

The mean score for attitude and awareness of nurses about rooming-in was 3.02 (range=2.13~3.80), which indicates that the nurses had positive opinions of the system. The factors with the highest and lowest scores were awareness of a successful implementation method (mean=3.35) and awareness of the advantages and disadvantages of the system (mean=2.73), respectively. The attitude and awareness of nurses about rooming-in differed significantly with age, religion, education level, parity, type of hospital, hospital nurse staffing grade (bed-to-nurse ratio), and presence of a rooming-in system.

This results of the study show that attitudes and awareness of nurses to rooming-in differed significantly according to personal factors (age, parity, religion, educational level) and work characteristics (hospital type, hospital nurse staffing grade, presence of rooming-in system). These findings can be used as basic data in determining optimal strategies for a system of rooming-in in the future.