Better care and better teaching. New model of postpartum care for early discharge programs.
PROBLEM BEING ADDRESSED: Rapid postpartum discharge has reduced opportunities to detect early newborn or parenting problems and to teach neonatal assessment and maternal postpartum care to medical trainees. OBJECTIVE OF PROGRAM: Development of a program to not only ensure adequate care of mothers and newborns after early hospital discharge, but also to teach outpatient assessment skills to family medicine residents. MAIN COMPONENTS OF PROGRAM: In an urban, secondary care, university-affiliated teaching hospital predominantly training family medicine residents, an interdisciplinary committee created and supervised a neonatal and maternal postpartum assessment program. Newborn infants and their mothers are seen by a family physician, a family medicine resident, and a nurse within 48 hours of discharge, after which care is assumed in the community by the child's primary care physician. An assessment protocol developed by the interdisciplinary group promotes standardized mother and child care and a structured learning experience for trainees. CONCLUSION: Rapid follow up of early discharged infants and their mothers can be facilitated by a program of standardized assessment by a roster of pooled, interacting family physicians and nurses. When this assessment occurs in a teaching milieu, a comprehensive learning experience can be combined with defined objectives that emphasize and encourage newborn and maternal assessment for ambulatory patients.