The Role of Nurses\u27 Knowledge of Postpartum Complications and its Effects on Maternal Mortality Rates in the United States: An Integrative Literature Review

Background:The maternal mortality rate for the United States of America still remains the highest of all developed countries with 20.7 deaths per 100,000 live births with the CDC estimating that 60% of all of the deaths were preventable. Objectives: The purpose of this integrative literature review was to identify the common causes of maternal mortality and nurses’ knowledge of these issues and how they apply this knowledge to care for and provide discharge education to patients. Methods: This integrative literature review was conducted with the key words “maternal mortality, maternal morbidity, postpartum, nurse’s education, complications, quality of care, discharge education, and contributing factors” to search literature from 2008-2018. All articles were in English and used the databases Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL) Complete, PubMed, and ProQuest. A total of five articles were used. Results:Five common causes of maternal mortality were identified: cardiovascular conditions, medical conditions related to pre-existing illness, infection, hemorrhage, and cardiomyopathy. The factors of age and ethnicity were also found to be contributing factors to maternal mortality. The knowledge and discharge education practiced by nurses do not effectively address the increasing maternal mortality rate. Conclusion: This study has shown that since 2006, the most common causes of maternal mortality have not changed much and that the risk of pregnancy-related mortality increases with maternal age and racial-ethnic disparities persisted with non-Hispanic black women having a 3.4 times higher mortality ratio than non-Hispanic white women. The study also showed that there is a significant gap in the nurses’ knowledge of these complications and the discharge education provided to the patients and family members. Key Words: maternal mortality, maternal morbidity, postpartum, nurse’s education, complications, quality of care, discharge education, and contributing factor