Introduction
According to World Health Organization (WHO), the bulk of infant and maternal deaths occur within the first month after childbirth. Approximately half of the maternal deaths occur in the first 24 hours after delivery and 66% are encountered in the first week (WHO, 2015) . Homer (2014) highlights that in 2013, pregnancy and childbirth complications (unsafe abortion, maternal hemorrhage, infection, obstructed labour and eclampsia) were implicated in the death of 289,000 women worldwide. Two million infants also died within the first seven days of life due to problems with preterm births, intra-partum complications, congenital abnormalities, sepsis, meningitis or pneumonia (Homer, 2014). Consequently, WHO updated its guidelines for postnatal care in 2015 in a bid to save life and improve maternal and child health. The proposed research intends to identify the missed care tasks and the contributing factors in postnatal care. It will use a questionnaire to obtain responses from student and practicing midwives. The quantitative data will be subjected to statistical analysis to determine its significance .
Problem Background
Postnatal duration refers to the immediate 6 to 8 weeks after child birth, and effective post-natal care prevents postpartum complications and enables detection when they occur (Beake et al., 2010; Forster et al., 2015). Through its 2015 guidelines, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) encourages women to involve healthcare staff during child-delivery . Post-natal care plan should also be developed, documented and reviewed by the attending professional. It should address infant feeding, postnatal wound care, pre-eclampsia, thromboembolism, gestational diabetes, hypertension, social support, emotional and mental health and contraceptive care. For hospital-deliveries, the postnatal care plan for mother and child should be reviewed daily until they are discharged (NICE, 2015) .
Most parents are satisfied with the high quality of postnatal care but some mothers.
Do maternity staff considered that care is missed on postnatal ward, in what areas and reason for the missed care?