Implementing Essential Coaching for Every Mother during the COVID‐19 pandemic: A pre‐post intervention study

  1. Justine Dol
  2. Megan Aston
  3. Amy Grant
  4. Douglas McMillan
  5. Gail Tomblin Murphy
  6. Marsha Campbell‐Yeo

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Abstract

Objectives

The primary objective of this project was to evaluate the preliminary impact of Essential Coaching for Every Mother on maternal self‐efficacy, social support, postpartum anxiety, and postpartum depression. The secondary objective was to explore the acceptability of the Essential Coaching for Every Mother program provided during the COVID‐19 pandemic.

Methods

A prospective pre‐post study was conducted with first‐time mothers in Nova Scotia, Canada, between July 15 and September 19, 2020. Participants completed a self‐report survey at enrollment (after birth) and 6 weeks postpartum. Various standardized measures were used, and qualitative feedback on the program was also collected. Paired t tests were carried out to determine changes from baseline to follow‐up on psychosocial outcomes, and qualitative feedback was analyzed through thematic analysis.

Results

A total of 88 women enrolled. Maternal self‐efficacy increased between baseline (B) and follow‐up (F) ( B : 33.33; F : 37.11, P  = 0.000), whereas anxiety (STAI) declined ( B : 38.49; F : 34.79, P  = 0.004). In terms of acceptability, 89% of participants felt that the number of messages was just right, 84.5% felt the messages contained all the information they needed relative to caring for a newborn, and 98.8% indicated they would recommend this program to other new mothers.

Conclusions

Essential Coaching for Every Mother may play a role in increasing maternal self‐efficacy and decreasing anxiety, although future work with a control group is needed to delineate the true effects of the program. Overall, mothers were satisfied with the Essential Coaching for Every Mother program and would recommend it for other mothers, during the COVID‐19 pandemic and beyond.

Article activity feed

  1. Version published to 10.1111/birt.12603
  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.01.13.21249598v2 on medRxiv
  3. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.13.21249598: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power AnalysisAs this was part of a feasibility study, no power calculations were conducted.
    Sex as a biological variableStudy Population & Sample Size: At IWK Health, approximately 169 primiparous women give birth each month (Reproductive Care Program of Nova Scotia, 2020).

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Limitations: This study was a feasibility study to determine the practicability of solely recruiting remotely for a text message program during COVID-19. While it is important to explore the potential impact of the program on participants, it is difficult to tease apart the impact of the program compared to the normal psychosocial adjustment that occurs during the postpartum period. Thus, the findings from this feasibility study are being used to inform the design of a randomized control trial to experimentally evaluate the effect of Essential Coaching for Every Mother. While not necessarily a limitation, but a point of discussion, is the fact that during the implementation of this study in the summer of 2020, Nova Scotia had a particularly low, near zero prevalence of new COVID-19 infections. However, there was still COVID-19 related impacts, including small family bubbles, not being able to travel freely beyond the Atlantic borders, having to wear masks and social distance, and reduced in-person social gatherings. Thus, while the addition of COVID-19 messaging may not have had the intended effect of addressing COVID-19 related concerns related to fear of high number of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, the messages seemed to have helped increase feelings of support as indicated by participant feedback. Further iterations of the Essential Coaching for Every Mother program should take this into consideration and modify the number and content of the COVID-19 messages based ...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  4. Version published to 10.1101/2021.01.13.21249598v1 on medRxiv