Background: Premature labor and prolonged hospitalization of a preterm infant in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) are very stressful for parents and are accompanied by a sense of loss and anxiety. Advances in technology have led to increasing use of short message services (SMS) in the medical disciplines. To date, the use of SMS for updating patients and families with medical information has not been reported.
In our NICU we implemented the SMS technique to give parents daily health status updates regarding their preterm infant.
Aim of our study: To evaluate the use of SMS technology for providing parents of preterm infants with medical updates and to evaluate its impact on the parents and the medical staff.
Methods: Parents and medical staff (nurses) completed questionnaires during two time periods – pre-SMS implementation (pre-SMSi) and post-SMS implementation (post-SMSi) – that included statements regarding medical information delivery, communication and trust between parents and medical staff, parental anxiety and overall satisfaction scale.
Results: A comparison between the two time period study groups showed that in the post‑SMS implantation time period parents stated they felt the physician was more available when needed (p=0.002), they felt more comfortable in approaching the physician (p=0.001) and were more satisfied with the medical information provided by the staff (p=0.032).
The medical staff noted that SMS use reduced their workload (p=0.019).
Conclusions: SMS updating is an easy and user-friendly technology that enriches the modalities of information delivery to parents of hospitalized preterm infants. The SMS technology was found to be a complementary and useful tool that encouraged and improved personal communication between the parents and the medical staff.
