4.3  Preparations for a postnatal home visit

4.3.1  Personal hygiene

A Health Extension Worker is smartly dressed as she greets a family.
Figure 4.3  Your appearance should give the new mother confidence in your professionalism.

Before you attend for a home visit, make sure you have taken care of your own personal hygiene with particular emphasis to your hair, nails and clothes. This instruction may seem very basic and simple, but a poor appearance and lack of hygiene can have a negative effect on your relationship with the community and families and can also easily affect the credibility of your work. Always wear simple but very clean clothes when you go for a home visit to provide PNC (Figure 4.3).

  • Why else is it important to emphasise hygiene? Think back to what you learned in some of the earlier study sessions in this Module.

  • Scrupulous attention to cleanliness and hygiene during birth and postnatal visits helps to prevent postpartum infections. If you stress your own personal hygiene it will be easier to persuade the mother and her family of the importance of cleanliness if her next baby is a home birth.

4.2  Schedule for postnatal home visits

4.3.2  Equipment