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. 2022 May 11:15:997-1009.
doi: 10.2147/RMHP.S360407. eCollection 2022.

Self-Care Mobile Application for South Korean Pregnant Women at Work: Development and Usability Study

Yaelim Lee  1   2 , Soeun Choi  3 , Heejae Jung  4
Affiliations

Self-Care Mobile Application for South Korean Pregnant Women at Work: Development and Usability Study

Yaelim Lee et al. Risk Manag Healthc Policy. .

Abstract

Background: Pregnant women at work often encounter barriers to participating in prenatal education or conducting appropriate self-care practices due to their working conditions.

Purpose: We aimed at developing a mobile-based intervention application (SPWW) for Korean pregnant women at work and testing its usability and preliminary effects to enhance their self-care practices.

Patients and methods: The application was developed and tested with thirty-one pregnant women at work and thirteen women's healthcare providers. The instruments used in this study were a modified Health Practices in Pregnancy Questionnaire II and a System Usability Scale. Descriptive analyses and t-tests were performed using SPSS 25.0. The participants' open-ended answers were analyzed using ATLAS. ti 8.

Results: We developed the application focusing on four self-care topics: healthy diet, physical activity, sufficient rest, and stress management. After using the application for two weeks, participants' levels of exercise (p = 0.006), adequate fluid intake (p = 0.002), and limiting daily caffeine intake (p = 0.048) significantly improved. In addition to good usability scores, the suggestions for improvement made by the participants included diversifying the educational materials and adding individually customizable functions to the application.

Conclusion: The application developed in this study enhanced self-care practices of pregnant women at work and showed adequate levels of usability. We expect the developmental process and details of the application provided in this study to serve as a sample guide for future studies.

Keywords: Asian; internet-based intervention; pregnancy; prenatal care; telemedicine.

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Conflict of interest statement

This research was funded by the National Research Foundation of Korea in 2019-2020 (2017R1C1B5075221). The funding body plays no role in the design of the study, data collection, analysis, interpretation, and writing the manuscript. The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work. The data of this study is available from the project investigator upon reasonable requests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Development process and basic technical flow of Self-care for Pregnant Women at Work Mobile Application.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Four components of SPWW mobile application (English translated version).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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