Antepartums-Our Most Important Patients

Purpose for the program: Addressing the need for structured programs and consistent nursing care to improve the antepartum patients experience in the hospital. 

Proposed change: Initiate program interventions that impact an antepartum patient's ability to cope and feel less lonely in her prolonged hospitalization. Collaborate with the SPCA to bring in therapy dogs for weekly visits. Collaborate with the spiritual care department to provide opportunities individualized for each AP patient: they offer meditation, live music through a Music in Medicine program, and the ability to work within each family's faith tradition to have a blessing or wishing good health ritual for the unborn fetus. Weekly tea parties that bring together antepartum patients for a facilitated chat about their hospitalized experience, their hopes and fears for their yet-to-be-born babies, and how to fight the boredom of long days/nights in the hospital. We also invite ex-antepartum mothers who now have NICU babies to come to the tea party to share their NICU experience. 

Implementation, outcomes and evaluation: Implementation of program relies on one shepherd to be the point person with the SPCA, and the co-facilitator for the tea party along with one of our perinatal social workers. The bedside nurses can initiate other interventions. We have found that mothers meeting at our tea party is enough of an introduction that they continue to contact one another either by phone, email, or visiting one another's room. Patient satisfaction is important to us and we are working on a method to conduct post-hospitalization interviews to find out if patients were able to cope "better" with their hospitalization after our interventions. 

Implications for nursing practice: Women experience loneliness, fear, anxiety and boredom during bed rest and hospitalization. A nurse's understanding of this experience is essential to provide adequate care and coping strategies for women at this time.

Keywords: Antepartum patients, Stressor, Coping, Collaboration, Needs