Implementation of kangaroo mother care: A randomized trial of two outreach strategies

Aim: To test whether a well-designed educational package on the implementation of kangaroo mother care (KMC) used on its own can be as effective in implementing KMC in a healthcare facility as the combination of a visiting facilitator used in conjunction with the package. Setting: Thirty-four hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. Method: The hospitals were paired with respect to their geographical location and annual number of births at the facility. One hospital in each pair was randomly allocated to receive either the implementation package alone (group A) or the implementation package and visits from a facilitator (group B). Hospitals in group B received three facilitation visits. All hospitals were evaluated by a site visit 8 mo after launching the process and were scored by means of a progress-monitoring tool. Outcomes: Successful implementation was regarded as demonstrating evidence of practice (score>10) during the site visit. Results: Group B scored significantly better than group A (p<0.05). All 17 hospitals in group B demonstrated evidence of practice, with the median score of the group being 15.44 (range 10.29-22.94). Twelve of the hospitals in group A demonstrated evidence of practice and the median score was 11.33 (range 1.08-21.13). Conclusion: Successful implementation was achieved in most of the hospitals irrespective of the strategy used. However, facilitation with an implementation package was clearly superior to using a package alone. Some sites do not need facilitation for successful implementation.