[Assistance to the healthy newborn infant. II. The current situation in Veneto]

We report the results of a research carried out giving all head physicians of the paediatrics departments in Veneto or of the neonatal sections a questionnaire in order to know how the lying-in woman and the healthy newborn are assisted. The principle information requested by the questionnaire are reported in Table n. 1. The structures of the labour and delivery rooms, regarding their present use, allow the continuous presence of the father during the delivery and the accomplishment of the rooming-in. On the contrary the assistance given to the mothers and the newborns is traditional in 80% of the cases, and they hard take measures able to favour suckling and a mother-child contact in the first hours of the delivery (fig. 2). The tendency to admit in the paediatrics department the newborn who presents problems even slight is not influenced by the apparatus equipped in the neonatal section, but it seems to be in proportion to the structure (number of the deliveries a year) and to the staff of the hospital. In conclusion we think that in our district not just logistical and structural limits but cultural and administrative obstacles slacken the accomplishment of a new neonatal assistance. Particularly we consider very important the administrative recognition of the activity carried out by the paediatricians in the neonatal section and in the puerpery, even if it is not linked to hospitalizations in the department.