Community Child Health (CCH) nurses’ experience of home visits for new mothers: A quality improvement project

Abstract

This papesr explores Community Child Health (CCH) nurses’ experience of home visits for new mothers in a health service region of Western Australia. Reported benefits of home visits include improvement in maternal and child health and better parenting skills leading to positive maternal–child interaction. Despite CCH nurses’ support for home visits factors such as costs, lack of resources and staffing issues have made home visits increasingly difficult. Twelve child health nurses participated in a focus group taped interview to explore how these nurses experienced home visits for new mothers in order to evaluate and improve home visits. Data were transcribed verbatim and content analysed. Three themes emerged from the nurses’ experience of home visits. These were: (1) finding out about home visits with sub-themes such as scheduling first home visits and making the first phone call, (2) staying safe during home visits with sub-themes such as managing high risk clients and scheduling subsequent visits and (3) building positive partnerships with clients during home visits. The findings indicated CCH nurses followed a set pathway towards successfully completing home visits. This may provide valuable insights for other CCH nurses.