Date of Publication

2021

Abstract

Background: Bringing a newborn home from the hospital can be a time of excitement, but also stress for new parents. This can include financial strain, lack of sleep, and preparations necessary to care for their new arrival. During this transition time, home visit support has demonstrated decreased parental stress and increased confidence in their new parenting roles. In response to these benefits, a pediatric home visit program holds promise for new parents.

Purpose: This quality assessment project evaluated a pediatric office’s home visit program for parental role and pediatric office satisfaction. Based on the analysis, recommendations for improvement were provided.

Methods: Families were placed into three groups: standard home visits, enhanced home visits (standard visit with a parental protective factor survey), and no home visits. Two telephone surveys were conducted two months apart to assess satisfaction with parental roles, the pediatric office, and the home visits.

Results: There were high baseline satisfaction levels with the pediatric office regardless of group. The enhanced home visit group had slightly higher average parental satisfaction levels. All groups reported increased knowledge of parenting resources over time. All participating home visit families indicated they were pleased with attention provided as part of the home visit program and noticed benefit in terms of stress levels.

Conclusions: These findings support the benefits of continuing the program and expanding to a wider array of families.

Document Type

Project

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