[Effects of a Hospital Based Follow-Up Program for Mothers with Very Low Birth Weight Infants]

Abstract

Purpose: This paper reports the results of a hospital centered follow-up program on parenting stress, parenting efficacy and coping for mothers with very low birth weight (VLBW) infants.

Methods: The follow-up program consisted of home visiting by an expert group and self-help program for 1 year. A non-equivalent control group pre-post quasi-experimental design was used. Participants were 70 mothers with low birth weight infants and were assigned to one of two groups, an experimental groups (n=28), which received the family support program; and a control group (n=27), which received the usual discharge education. Data were analyzed using χ²-test, t-test, and ANCOVA with IBM SPSS statistics 20.0.

Results: Mothers' parenting stress (F=5.66, p=.004) was significantly decreased in the experimental group. There were also significant increases in parenting efficacy (F=13.05, p<.001) and coping (F=8.91, p=.002) in the experimental group.

Conclusion: The study findings suggest that a follow-up program for mothers with VLBW infants is an effective intervention to decrease mothers' parenting stress and to enhance parenting efficacy and coping.

Keywords: Coping behavior; Follow-up studies; Parenting; Very low birth weight infants.