Knowledge of mothers about neonatal heel prick

Abstract

The Neonatal screening, popularly known as heel prick test, is an important strategy for screening metabolic, infectious and genetic diseases, being carried out through a laboratory test that analyzes drops of blood, collected from the heel of children in the neonatal period. This study aims to analyze researches published on the national literature on mothers’ knowledge of of the test, demonstrating the relevance of the educational practices by health professionals. It is an integrative review of the literature conducted in December 2015, on LILACS and MEDLINE databases. We selected four national/international articles that addressed the topic/issue of the study. The results showed that mothers knew about the existence of the test, even if superficially. In all items selected, the importance of health professionals, especially nurses, in the outline of proposed educational practices for mothers was evident. The study highlighted the relevance of disseminating the information about the test, demonstrating its importance to children survival. It was concluded that this will contribute to the reflection and discussion, among health professionals, about the relevance of the heel prick test, since it provides the detection of diseases that can cause irreversible changes in the newborn neuropsychomotor development.