The Parenting Premmies Support Program: developing and piloting a mobile health intervention for mothers of preterm infants

The study presented in this thesis aimed to investigate the use of contemporary mobile health technology as a vehicle to support and promote the health and wellbeing of mothers of preterm infants during the transitional time following their infant’s discharge from hospital. Much of the focus of previous research has been on parenting preterm infants in the hospital environment. It is well known that mothers of preterm infants face significant challenges as they attempt to parent their infant not only in the hospital nursery environment, but beyond the infant’s discharge from hospital. They require targeted and tailored support to address their issues in ways that promote their confidence in their parenting. Of interest was supporting the relationship between the mother-infant dyad guided by the principles of attachment theory to promote responsive parenting interactions and practices. An exploratory, mixed methods approach with a three phase design was used to understand maternal experience, challenges and issues in this context, develop an mHealth protocol that formed the program, and finally, pilot the program. The phases were sequential with each informed by findings from the previous one. In each phase the experience and opinions of mothers of preterm infants were acknowledged and included. First, women’s accounts of their experience were collected in semi-structured interviews and subject to a descriptive content analysis. In the second phase a collaborative, stakeholder interrogation of issues was conducted to develop content of the mHealth protocol. In this phase, two interdependent procedures were used with two participant panels; a stakeholder panel undertook a series of face-to-face meetings, and a user group panel of women who had birthed a preterm infant up to 12 months before undertook an online Delphi survey. In phase three a pilot implementation of the program was undertaken with women whose preterm infants were being discharged home from hospital. They evaluated the program’s usability and usefulness using an online survey.Submitted in the fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of the Sunshine Coast, 2017