Online educational guide about care for premature babies: user acceptance

Abstract

Motivated by the lack of didactical material about care for premature babies directed at parents, we participatively developed an educational guide about daily and special care, feeding, hygiene and family relations of premature babies, in collaboration with nursing staff and mothers. The guide is available online (www.eerp.usp.br/gesca) and was widely disseminated in the media. The goal was to describe the dissemination and repercussion of the educational guide in communication means and to identify the opinions of users who requested the guide by e-mail. We received 120 requests, of which 48 subjects participated in this study (11 preterm mothers, 6 fathers, 2 aunts, 5 students, 4 faculty and 20 health professionals from 10 states) and sent their free and informed consent. The contents of the users’ opinions were analyzed. We found that the acceptance of the guide was excellent, as it attends to clients’ needs, helps them with their self-confidence, fills a gap in literature and permits the return of the produced knowledge to society. Users presented suggestions to improve the guide, such as the inclusion of contents about growth and development of the preterm baby, the child’s recovery and the parents’ emotional state; as well as its large-scale distribution. We conclude that the guide is an adequate instrument to help parents, family, students and health professionals in permanent and health education about care with a view to preterm babies’ discharge. Content suggestions were incorporated into the 2nd edition of the guide, called “Care for the premature baby: orientations for the family”, offered freely in a print and online version.