Influence of Decision Aids on the Choice of Mother-infant Rooming-in or Separation Care for Pregnant Women
Condition: Pregnancy Related
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      During early postpartum period, mother-infant proximity is important for breastfeeding
      success. Rooming-in and separate care are both traditional practices. Rooming-in involves
      keeping the mother and the baby together in the same room after birth during hospitalization,
      whereas separate care keeps the baby in the hospital baby room. Shared decision making with
      decision aid (DA) is a way to provide information to pregnant women and to involve them in
      making decisions about their strategy on baby care. We have developed a DA to be administered
      during consultation for pregnant women, and conducted a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to
      evaluate the benefit of DA on decision making. The measurements include a battery of
      interview-based questionnaires and evaluations of decision regret. We expect the DA would
      benefit the intervention group in the aspects of knowledge and communication in choosing
      mother-baby care options.
    

Detailed description: 
      Background:

      During early postpartum period, mother-infant proximity is important for breastfeeding
      success. Rooming-in and separate care are both traditional practices. Rooming-in involves
      keeping the mother and the baby together in the same room after birth during hospitalization,
      whereas separate care keeps the baby in the hospital baby room. Using decision aid (DA) is
      one way to provide information to pregnant women and to involve them in making decisions
      about their mother-baby care approaches.

      Patients and Methods:

      Decision aids are interventions designed to help pregnant women to choose their options of
      mother-baby care by providing information on those options and any potential outcome relevant
      to different mother-baby care options. Pregnant women considering mother-baby care approaches
      are randomly assigned to receive a DA or the standard oral information (control condition)
      during consultation.

      By asking the pregnant women to look into a series of paired-comparisons, the DA leads the
      pregnant women to consider the competing attributes (i.e. specific risks/benefits) of the
      care options. The primary outcomes are decision conflicts and decision-making difficulties
      after consultation.

      Hypothesis:

      The pregnant women of the DAs group are predicted to have lower decisional conflict scores
      before labor and lower decision regret scores after labor compared with controlled women. Our
      study hopes to support the efficacy of DAs in helping pregnant women to arrive at mother-care
      decision.
    

Intervention name(s): Decision aid
Intervention type(s): Other
Intervention description(s): Decision aid is a tool that helps pregnant women become involved in decision making on choosing rooming-in or separation care. Decision aid provides information about the options and outcomes, and by clarifying personal values.
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: Double (Participant, Outcomes Assessor)
Primary purpose: Health Services Research
Keywords: separation care; rooming-in care; patient decision aid