Basic neonatal resuscitation: retention of knowledge and skills of primary health care workers in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Southern Nigeria

INTRODUCTION: birth attendants' retention of knowledge and skills of neonatal resuscitation post-training can prevent birth asphyxia by repeatedly applying neonatal resuscitation guidelines. This study assessed primary healthcare workers' retention of knowledge and skills of basic neonatal resuscitation. METHODS: in 28 primary health centres, 106 birth attendants had their knowledge and skills assessed following a one-day neonatal resuscitation training. The evaluation was before, immediately after training, at three months (a subset of participants) and six months. Paired t-tests were used to compare mean scores at two different evaluation times. RESULTS: the mean baseline knowledge and skills scores were 35.22% ± 12.90% and 21.40% ± 16.91% respectively. Immediately after training, it increased to 81.48% ± 7.05% and 87.40% ± 13.97% respectively (p=0.0001). At three months, it decreased to 55.37% ± 20.50% and 59.11% ± 25.55% respectively (p=0.0001), at six months it was 55.77% ± 14.28% and 60.38% ± 19.79% respectively (p=0.0001). Following immediate post-training at 6 months, knowledge and skills scores increased to 94.91 ± 7.28% and 96.02 ± 4.50% respectively (p=0.0001). No participant had adequate knowledge and one had adequate skills at baseline. The proportion of those with adequate knowledge and skills markedly increased immediate post-training but decreased remarkably at three-month and at six-month evaluations respectively. 99.1% had adequate knowledge and all had adequate skills immediate post-training at 6 months. CONCLUSION: neonatal resuscitation training led to an improvement in knowledge and skills with suboptimal retention at three to six months post-training. Re-training improved knowledge and skills. We recommend that the retention of knowledge and skills could improve by retraining and mentoring at least 3-6 monthly.