Cultural and non-functional practices regarding baby care of women applying to a family health center

This study was conducted to determine the cultural and disfunctional practices of infant care of women who applied to the family health center. The population of the study, which was carried out as a retrospective descriptive study, consists of women between the ages of 18-49 registered in 5 (five) Family Health Centers located in a district of a city in the west of Turkey. The sample of the study was determined as 128 people by G-power analysis. Considering the losses that may occur in the data collection process, it was planned to recruit a total of 150 women, 30 of whom met the inclusion criteria of the study, from each Family Health Center using the stratified sampling method. A total of 208 women were reached in the study. The data were collected by face-to-face interview method between September 2020 and January 2021, using the sociodemographic data form prepared by the researchers by scanning the literature, the cultural practices for infant care form and the Scale of Dysfunctional Practices for Baby Care (BBIFOUI). Ethics committee, permission to use the scale, institutional permission, and informed consent were obtained from the women participating in the study before starting the study. For statistical analysis, SPSS for Windows version 24.0 package program was used as descriptive statistics as number, percentage, mean and standard deviation, Shaphiro-wilk test for checking the conformity of continuous variables with normal distribution, Mann Whitney U test for comparing non-normally distributed scale scores in 2 independent groups, more than two independent Kruskal Wallis and Dunn multiple comparison tests were used to compare the groups. In addition, p<0.05 was considered statistically significant. 31.3% of the women participating in the study are in the 30-34 age group, 50% are secondary/high school graduates, 71.2% are housewives, and 73.6% reside in the province. It was determined that 47.6% of the women participating in the study had their first birth between the ages of 20-24, 40.9% had two (2) children and 78.4% had not received any training on baby care before. The total mean score of the women's BBIFOUS was 81.08± 8.63, the median 84 (min: 42- max: 90), and the cronbach alpha value was 0.80. A high score on the scale indicates that the knowledge about dysfunctional beliefs and practices is healthier. It was determined that the total of the women fed their babies in the first one (1) hour after birth, 86.0% of them fed with breast milk and all of the women stated that colostrum should be given to the baby. In traditional baby care, women are 70% salting, 31% drinking yellow writing or sugar water for jaundice, 59% swaddling and 20% lubricating with vegetable oils so that the umblical cord falls off quickly, 20% pomegranate in the mouth of the baby with gas. It was determined that they made applications such as dripping water. It was determined that the women who participated in the research made cultural and non-functional practices related to baby care. It has been determined that those who are high school and university graduates, live in the city center, receive training on baby care, feed their baby with breast milk first after birth, and have children between 0-24 months have higher scores in the BBIFOUI. It is recommended that nurses working in primary health care provide a holistic approach by defining and evaluating the cultural structure of the society and educating women on baby care. Keywords: traditional and cultural practices, non-functional applications, baby care, nursing