abstract: 'Objective: To identify barriers and enablers to conducting safe uninterrupted skin-to-skin contact (SSC) in the first hour after birth in a low-resource setting and to evaluate how health care professionals coped with the identified barriers after completion of an intervention package. Design and setting: A qualitative method using focus-group and individual interviews with health professionals at a governmental hospital in Uganda. Participants: 81 health professionals. Interventions: A 6-step intervention package including, amongst other things, showing a DVD on safe uninterrupted SSC following birth and discussing with the professionals what barriers and possibilities there were to changing practice to allow SSC for one hour. Measurements and findings: The thematic analysis of the intervention interviews yielded the following themes: Perceived barriers including medical events, psychosocial issues and standard midwifery practice; Pragmatic barriers including economic constraints in the hospital and community; Anticipated barriers by staff and families; Enabling events including staff involvement. Most of the barriers involving expenses were not solved. When the mother and infant had to move to the postnatal ward within one hour after birth, there were difficulties in keeping SSC during the transportation, but this obstacle was partly solved. A few mothers (i.e. depressed and/or adolescent) were considered to be unwilling to keep the infant skin-to-skin; this difficulty was not solved. Practising SSC led the participants to find advantages such as reduced work load and positive effects on pain during suturing. Conclusions: SSC following birth was shown to be applicable and accepted by the health professionals. The involvement of professionals had clinical implications, such as initiatives to broadcast the message of SSC by radio to the community and introduce SSC to women having a Caesarean section. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.' affiliation: 'Hjelmstedt, A (Corresponding Author), Karolinska Inst, Dept Womens \& Childrens Hlth, Stockholm, Sweden. Mbalinda, Scovia, Makerere Univ, Dept Nursing, Coll Hlth Sci, Kampala, Uganda. Hjelmstedt, Anna; Nissen, Eva; Svensson, Kristin, Karolinska Inst, Dept Womens \& Childrens Hlth, Stockholm, Sweden. Odongkara, Beatrice Mpora, Gulu Univ, Gulu Reg Referral \& Teaching Hosp, Dept Paediat \& Child Hlth, Gulu, Uganda. Waiswa, Peter, Karolinska Inst, Hlth Syst Policy, Dept Publ Hlth Sci, Stockholm, Sweden. Waiswa, Peter, Makerere Univ, Coll Hlth Sci, Sch Publ Hlth, Maternal Newborn \& Child Hlth Ctr Excellence, Kampala, Uganda. Svensson, Kristin, Karolinska Univ Hosp, Solna, Sweden.' author: Mbalinda, Scovia and Hjelmstedt, Anna and Nissen, Eva and Odongkara, Beatrice Mpora and Waiswa, Peter and Svensson, Kristin author-email: anna.hjelmstedt@ki.se author_list: - family: Mbalinda given: Scovia - family: Hjelmstedt given: Anna - family: Nissen given: Eva - family: Odongkara given: Beatrice Mpora - family: Waiswa given: Peter - family: Svensson given: Kristin da: '2023-09-28' doi: 10.1016/j.midw.2018.09.009 eissn: 1532-3099 files: [] issn: 0266-6138 journal: MIDWIFERY keywords: 'Skin-to-skin contact; Health professionals; Implementation; Focus-group interview; Low-income setting' keywords-plus: MOTHER-INFANT INTERACTION; BREAST; CARE language: English month: DEC number-of-cited-references: '34' orcid-numbers: 'N Mbalinda, Scovia/0000-0002-4945-130X svensson, kristin/0000-0002-7138-6209' pages: 95-102 papis_id: 9242101633b3dfaeb03a33b27224c5ea ref: Mbalinda2018experienceperceived times-cited: '5' title: Experience of perceived barriers and enablers of safe uninterrupted skin-to-skin contact during the first hour after birth in Uganda type: Article unique-id: WOS:000447751500013 usage-count-last-180-days: '0' usage-count-since-2013: '9' volume: '67' web-of-science-categories: Nursing year: '2018'