Training on the Silverman and Andersen score improved how special care unit nurses assessed neonatal respiratory distress in a low-resource setting.

AIM: Identifying the severity of neonatal respiratory distress (RD) is essential, so that resources can be appropriately allocated. We assessed the ability of nurses to grade neonatal RD in a low-resource setting before and after they were trained to use a dedicated scoring tool.

METHODS

The study was conducted in the Special Care Unit of St Luke Wolisso Hospital, Ethiopia. Ten nurses reviewed nine local video recordings and graded neonatal RD without a standardised method, which was current practice, and then after they were trained to use the Silverman and Andersen score. The data were analysed using the McNemar test and Cohen's kappa.

RESULTS

Training increased the identification of mild RD from 63% to 93% (p = 0.008) and moderate RD from 40% to 73% (p = 0.03). Severe RD was 93% before and 90% after training (p = 0.99). Overall, the agreement improved from kappa 0.59 to 0.84, mainly by reducing the overestimation of milder degrees of RD.

CONCLUSION

Being trained on how to use the Silverman and Andersen score improved the ability of nurses to identify mild and moderate neonatal RD. This improvement has the potential to optimise the use of equipment, staff and time.