School of Community & Environmental Health, College of Health Sciences, Old Dominion University, 3136 Health Sciences Building, 4608 Hampton Blvd, Hampton BlvdNorfolk, VA, 460823508, USA.
Virginia Department of Health, Chesapeake Health District, 748 Battlefield Blvd North, Chesapeake, VA, 23320-4941, USA.
BMC Pregnancy Childbirth. 2023 Aug 11;23(1):577. doi: 10.1186/s12884-023-05896-9.
The experiences of mothers enrolled in Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program with virtual home visiting (VHV) during the pandemic remain mostly unknown. This study aimed to describe in detail the experience of home visitors and mothers with VHV during COVID-19 pandemic. This is a prerequisite for guiding future efforts to optimize MIECHV services that are provided through virtual operation.
Focus groups discussion were conducted with home visitors (n = 13) and mothers (n = 30) who were enrolled in BabyCare program in Virginia from January 2019 to June 2022. This included mothers who received in-person home visiting (IPHV), VHV, or both (hybrid IPHV and VHV). Inductive analysis was used to identify emergent themes from the transcripts, then coding was conducted following a codebook that was developed by the research team.
Both mothers and home visitors considered IPHV necessary for a proper assessment of developmental milestones of children, for the assessment of the growth of the child through measuring the weight and height/length of the child, for the mothers to open up and discuss sensitive issues like domestic violence, for building a relationship between home-visitor and the parents, and for other potential benefits (comprehensive assessment of the environment around the child inside and outside the house from home visitors' perspective and detecting abnormal health conditions in children from mothers' perspective). Both mothers and home visitors see that VHV has some role to play but not to be a replacement for IPHV. If VHV is to be used, video conference is preferred by both mothers and home visitors, as it allows for some assessment.
Mothers and nurses considered IPHV critical for proper and comprehensive assessment of the child and the family and also essential to build the nurse-client relationship. Both mothers and home visitors considered VHV supplementary to IPHV that can be used from time to time particularly with busy mothers. VHV may have little room with parents with intellectual disabilities and the difficulty in dealing with technology seems to be no longer a major issue.
在大流行期间，参加母婴幼儿家庭访视（MIECHV）计划并接受虚拟家访（VHV）的母亲的体验在很大程度上尚不清楚。本研究旨在详细描述在 COVID-19 大流行期间家访者和母亲接受 VHV 的体验。这是指导未来通过虚拟操作优化 MIECHV 服务的必要前提。
2019 年 1 月至 2022 年 6 月，在弗吉尼亚州参加 BabyCare 计划的家访者（n=13）和母亲（n=30）进行了焦点小组讨论。这包括接受过面对面家访（IPHV）、VHV 或两者（混合 IPHV 和 VHV）的母亲。使用归纳分析从转录本中识别出新兴主题，然后按照研究团队制定的代码本进行编码。
母亲和家访者都认为 IPHV 对于适当评估儿童的发育里程碑、通过测量儿童的体重和身高/长度来评估儿童的生长、母亲敞开心扉讨论家庭暴力等敏感问题、在家访者和父母之间建立关系以及其他潜在益处（从家访者的角度全面评估儿童屋内和屋外的环境以及从母亲的角度检测儿童的异常健康状况）是必要的。母亲和家访者都认为 VHV 有一定的作用，但不能替代 IPHV。如果要使用 VHV，母亲和家访者都更喜欢视频会议，因为它可以进行一些评估。
母亲和护士认为 IPHV 对于适当和全面评估儿童和家庭至关重要，也是建立护士与客户关系的关键。母亲和家访者都认为 VHV 是 IPHV 的补充，可以不时使用，特别是对于忙碌的母亲。VHV 可能在有智力残疾的父母中没有多大空间，而且处理技术似乎不再是一个主要问题。
