Postpartum Early Discharge

Caroline Smith-Hanrahan and Denise Deblois
Additional contact information
Caroline Smith-Hanrahan: McGill University School of Nursing
Denise Deblois: Royal Victoria Hospital

Clinical Nursing Research, 1995, vol. 4, issue 1, 50-66

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of a postpartum early discharge program, with home follow-up by hospital nursing staff, on the maternal fatigue and functional ability of low-risk mothers with healthy neonates. A quasi-experimental design was used. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of two groups receiving the early-discharge program (hospital stay less than 60 hours plus home follow-up by hospital-based nurses; n = 35) or traditional hospital care (hospital stay more than 60 hours and no home follow-up by hospital staff; n = 17). A third group emerged from those originally assigned to traditional care but later transferred to early discharge due to bed shortages (n = 29). The Rhoten Fatigue Scale and the inventory of Functional Status After Childbirth were used to collect the data at discharge and 1 and 6 weeks postpartum period. No significant differences between groups were found, suggesting that early discharge with adequate home follow-up does not affect the low-risk mother's fatigue and functional ability to any significantly greater extent than traditional care. It was also noted that regardless of type of care, the proportion of subjects reporting severe fatigue was relatively large (25%, 31%, and 19% at discharge, I and 6 weeks postpartum period), highlighting the need for further study of maternal fatigue in the postpartum period.

Date: 1995
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/105477389500400106 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:clnure:v:4:y:1995:i:1:p:50-66

DOI: 10.1177/105477389500400106

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Clinical Nursing Research
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().