Conference Proceedings - School of Nursing & Midwifery - Trinity ...

School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin: 8 th Annual Interdisciplinary Research Conference
Transforming Healthcare Through Research, Education & Technology: 7 th – 9 th November 2007
Conference Proceedings
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Care priorities and postpartum provision, a survey of
Northern Ireland health visitors working in one Health and
Social Services Board
Janice Christie PhD MA BSc (Hons) Dip. Com. Nur. (HV) RGN
RSCPHN
Teaching Fellow
School of Nursing and Midwifery
Queen’s University, Belfast
Medical and Biology Centre
97 Lisburn Road
BT9 7BL
Telephone: +44 (0)28 90975747
Fax: +44 (0)28 9097 2328
j.christie@qub.ac.uk
Systematic reviews have produced evidence that antenatal and
postpartum home visitation by public health nurses can benefit
families. Traditionally, health visitors and midwives within the UK
have offered care to all families with young children. The latest
Health for All Children report (Hall and Elliman, 2003) has
advocated prioritising care according to professional judgement of
‘higher risk/need’. Little is known, however, about the basis of
health visitors’ professional judgements. The aim of this study is to
assess health visitors’ care priorities and basis of postpartum care
decisions.
In this quantitative study, undertaken in Northern Ireland, the
researcher selected survey data from health visitors working in one
Health and Social Services Board. All 108 health visitors were
invited to take part and 99 returned postal questionnaires. Survey
questions concerned work priorities and postpartum care, using a
theoretic framework derived from an earlier qualitative study
undertaken by the author. Data was analysed using descriptive,
parametric and non parametric statistics using SPSS version 11.
Health visitors gave child protection work highest (mean 9.9), and
antenatal care lowest workload rating (mean 2.5). The professionals
visited low-risk families on average 4.7 and higher-risk 5.8 times to
8 weeks postpartum. Paired t-test comparison of mean frequency of
postpartum home visitation found higher preferred than actual
visitation patterns for low-risk families (except bottle feeding
mothers with more than one child, 1.412, p=0.161). Health visitors
decided fortnightly (Friedman; 19.593, p=0.000) and weekly
(28.618, p=0.000) home visits to low-risk families according to
personal value placed on specific aspects of health visitor care. The
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