The Care Guide provides safety and autonomy for new families

Pregnant women, new mothers, and families are offered digital support from Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, Aarhus University Hospital. The Emento Patient Guide provided through an app guides families through the first weeks of parenthood. This solution increases autonomy and meets the demands for more individual and easy-to-use digital solutions. 

The patient role is changing and one of the most significant changes is the great shift towards patient autonomy and individualized and accessible healthcare support when needed. 

Therefore, Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, Aarhus University Hospital provides new mothers and families with knowledge and information after birth, which can be accessed in a timely manner. The goal of the Care Guide is to ensure that new families have the knowledge needed to provide for their newborn during the first vital weeks to optimize the child's future health. Evaluations of the Care Guide show high user satisfaction and increased comfort, safety, and sense of being valued. Length of hospitalization has been reduced also in more complicated births from an average of 3.5 to 3.2 days.

Positive motherhood

According to a qualitative systematic review published April 22, 2020, "what matters to women in the postnatal period is to obtain a positive mindset in motherhood including maternal self‐esteem, competence, and autonomy".

The time spent in hospital for pregnant women from admission to discharge has become shorter. In Denmark, the average length of stay in hospital when giving birth is 1-2 days for first-time mothers and between 6-8 hours for women who have given birth before. Naturally, the accelerated pace of hospitalization may leave new families with unanswered questions and there is a chance that the information was provided in situations where the new family was not ready to take it in. 

Using the care guide, families can easily contact staff from the department. However, experiences have shown that the families rarely use the contact function because they can often find the answers they need in the many videos and texts in the app.

In the summer 2017, the department received 1360 calls after the new mothers were discharged; in the summer 2018, this number was reduced to 1265 calls despite an increase in the number of births of 32 in the same period. After implementation of the care guides, the number of calls has been reduced by 7%.

Higher user satisfaction and utilization of resources

The Care Guide platform has generally made it possible to redistribute and optimize staff resources in the department. Clinicians can now spend  e.g., more time on complicated and vulnerable pregnancies contributing to increase equality in health.