Premium
Nurses’ Responses to Changes in Maternity Care, Part I. Family‐Centered Changes and Short Hospitalization
Author(s) -
Stolte Karen,
Myers Sheila Taylor
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
birth
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.233
H-Index - 83
eISSN - 1523-536X
pISSN - 0730-7659
DOI - 10.1111/j.1523-536x.1987.tb01458.x
Subject(s) - maternity care , stratified sampling , nursing , family medicine , medicine , affect (linguistics) , descriptive research , psychology , pregnancy , statistics , genetics , mathematics , communication , pathology , biology
A descriptive study was conducted to determine what changes nurses report in maternity care and how these changes affect them and their practice. The stratified random sample was composed of six female, full‐time registered nurses with a minimum of three years’ maternity experience from each of 10 hospitals in central Oklahoma and southeastern Kansas. Fifty‐nine interviews, using a semistructured format, were completed, transcribed, and coded. Changes related to family‐centered maternity care, short postpartum hospitalization, and patient characteristics are reported here. Patients know more about what to expect than they did only a few years ago, but also seem to expect the ideal; they are both older and younger than before, and many are sick or at high risk. Nurses reported more job satisfaction overall, but that their workloads had increased as a result of these changes, with more “traffic managing” and patient teaching required. Conflicts arise from lack of postpartum teaching time, lower patient census causing job insecurity, and from the need to care for all the members of the family instead of only mothers or babies. Some interdisciplinary conflict was also reported.