Home visits in the health care to the very-low-birth-weight infants and their families

Abstract

Home visit (HV) is a strategy that expands the patient care. The objectives of this study were to characterize the families and the very-low-birth-weight infants that received HV, and systematize problems that were found as well as interventions carried out. Descriptive quantitative study undertaken with 86 families, of whom 83.7% received HV before being discharged from hospital and 86% post-discharge. The monthly family income was lower than 1.9 minimum wages in 66.4% of families and 30.6% of the mothers were adolescents. Most of the babies (88.4%) remained in hospital for more than 30 days and 40.7% were discharged from hospital before turning 37 weeks of corrected gestational age. At pre-discharge visits, 40.5% of the identified problems were related to house and environment conditions. At post-discharge visits, 25% of the problems were related to feeding and in 65% of these visits were made references to the Basic Health Unit. The HV allowed the recognition of the family context and an early detection of problems and difficulties, being an effective tool in the comprehensive and individualized assistance to families and babies.