Birthing parent and companion verbal reactions following interactions with inpatient postpartum health care team members: an observational study using naturalistic filming.

Background: Respectful, equitable, and supportive health care team interactions with patients and their companions are a key part of quality health care services. Despite the importance of communication and other aspects of engagement during inpatient postpartum care, little is known about how care is experienced during this period from families' perspectives.

Methods: This study collected video and audio data with 15 birthing families (n = 9 English-speaking and n = 6 Spanish-speaking) and their health care team members during inpatient postpartum care in a southeastern United States academic medical center. This analysis quantifies health care team member presence in family hospital rooms, assesses linguistic appropriateness of health care team member verbal communication, and describes birthing parent and companion verbal reactions to health care team member interactions. A behavioral taxonomy was applied to identify these codes in the 12 h prior to hospital discharge. Additionally, we transcribed the birthing parent and companion verbal reactions for 10-minutes each time the health care team member departed their room. This content was inductively coded to identify topics and develop themes.

Results: A total of 160 h of video and audio data were coded across 15 participating families for this analysis. There were 19.9 h of missing data in the 12 h prior to hospital discharge due to equipment being turned off across five participants. At least one health care team member was present in the postnatal unit rooms within the observation period in 200 instances (median 13 times, range 5 to 19 times per participating family). Communication with Spanish-speaking birthing parents was linguistically appropriate for between 20.0% and 75.0% of interactions. Following health care team member presence, birthing parent and companion reactions were indeterminate 1 time, no verbal reaction 107 times, positive 25 times, confused 38 times, and negative 52 times. Many parents expressed more than one reaction. Reaction topics included clarity of information provided, postpartum pain management, hospital discharge coordination, health care team member conduct, and access to supplies.

Conclusion: There are strengths in postpartum patient engagement as well as areas for health care team improvement. More appropriate communication including setting of clearer expectations surrounding various aspects of services on the postnatal unit may improve patient experiences. As a part of this improved quality of inpatient postpartum care, consistent utilization of interpretation services could decrease patient confusion, enable shared decision-making, and promote positive patient-provider relationships.