Qualification of nursing potential in maternal mortality in Mexico

OBJECTIVES: To develop a method that measures nursing potential through the factor analysis of relevant nursing data and social context by taking maternal mortality as the study problem. METHODS: A Cross-sectional and analytical study, a multivariate analysis was performed. The Nursing Coverage Index, the Human Development Index, population density and the proportion of nurses with a bachelor’s degree or upper degree, are studied by federative entity, only data from government sources are used. The Index of Nursing Qualification in Mexico (INQM) was constructed through principal component analysis. RESULTS: The highest correlation was between the INQM and the Nursing Coverage Prioritization Index (NCPI), which was 0.849 (P < 0.01) and showed a strong positive linear relationship. The Population Density Prioritization Index (PDPI) shows a strong positive correlation with the INQM (0.716, P < 0.01). Three factors were extracted by principal component analysis and the INQM was generated with the three main components in a model. There is very low correlation between INQM and maternal mortality rate (MMR) and no statistical significance was found. CONCLUSIONS: This study shows that nursing qualification must include economic, geographic and social variables. The INQM is an indicator that summarises the potential of each federative entity. Given these results, a contribution is provided for the application of these indices, which can help determine nursing potential in a specific geographical region.