Adolescents' Perceptions of Inpatient Postpartum Nursing Care

Abstract

The authors used a transcendental phenomenological approach to describe adolescent mothers' satisfactory and unsatisfactory inpatient postpartum nursing care experiences. They analyzed data from 14 in-depth interviews and found that adolescent mothers' satisfaction is dependent on their perceptions of the nurse's ability to place them “at ease.” Nursing care qualities that contributed to satisfactory experiences included nurses' sharing information about themselves, being calm, demonstrating confidence in mothers, speaking to adolescent and adult mothers in the same way, and anticipating unstated needs. Nursing care was perceived to be unsatisfactory when it was too serious, limited to the job required, or different from care to adult mothers, or when nurses failed to recognize individual needs. In extreme cases, unsatisfactory experiences hindered development of an effective nurse-client relationship. These findings illustrate the value of qualitative inquiry for understanding patients' satisfaction with care, can be used for self-reflection, and have implications for nursing education programs.