Abstract
Nearly 700,000 women suffer from pregnancy complications and are treated with bed rest. The hospitalized antepartum patient with a high-risk pregnancy can suffer from stress and anxiety due to the uncertainty of their pregnancy outcomes and the possibility of premature birth. Newborn intensive care unit (NICU) education with the high-risk prenatal women may reduce some of the boredom, loss of control, and fear of the unknown for prenatal women on bed rest. There is a lack of research using NICU education to reduce stress in the prenatal women on bed rest. The purpose of this clinical, innovative study was to examine whether on-line NICU education reduces the prenatal women’s stress level while on bed rest. The study design was a quantitative experimental and qualitative evaluation of comments. It was hypothesized that providing NICU on-line education would decrease maternal stress and improve outcomes of premature infants. The study had two, randomly-assigned subject groups with a sample size of 119 subjects. The prenatal patients were provided with a private, local, web-based support group called “moms-in-waiting”. The treatment group received on-line NICU education via the internet and the control group received no NICU education via the internet. The survey tool was the 10-item Perceived Stress Scale. Of the 119 participants, 50 took at least two surveys. The data were analyzed using the independent t-test. Although there was no statistically significant reduction in maternal stress in the intervention group, feedback from the participants on the final survey was positive. The participants commented that the NICU education website was helpful and 45% of participants took a NICU tour prior to delivery and thought it was very helpful.