6126 A qualitative report on maternal experience of home phototherapy

Objectives Neonatal jaundice is a common condition in babies. Treatment with phototherapy often prolongs hospital stays for the mother-infant dyad or requires readmission. After a successful pilot of home phototherapy in 2018, a Home Phototherapy program was introduced in 2019 providing a 7-day service covering the two major maternity units in Birmingham. This is now an established service provided by our neonatal community outreach team (NCOT) for infants with hospital-initiated as well as community- initiated phototherapy and to date approximately 1000 infants have used the service. We routinely obtain feedback from parents of all infants who use the service, and this has been overwhelmingly positive. Our goal was to obtain a more in-depth maternal experience of home phototherapy from mothers who experienced both in-hospital and home phototherapy. Methods A retrospective data set of 30 infants who received both in-hospital phototherapy and home phototherapy between July 2021 to January 2022 was collected. The mothers of these infants were contacted via telephone to obtain their feedback (after discharge from the service), using a set questionnaire which included 8 closed- ended questions and 7 open-ended questions. Results All mothers expressed satisfaction with: 1) demonstration of the equipment, 2) ease of use, 3) contact with the NCOT. Most mothers gave overwhelmingly positive feedback on their interaction with the home phototherapy team and the service provided. 94% experienced stress due to their infants developing jaundice and having home phototherapy markedly reduced their stress. They expressed overwhelming preference for home phototherapy (94%) over in-hospital phototherapy with various reasons being given (see figure 1). Most infants coped well with home phototherapy. Mothers reported on the positive impact of home phototherapy on their infants, infant's siblings, fathers, and the extended family. Conclusion All mothers expressed overwhelming positive feedback on their experience of home phototherapy. The service was well explained, easily administered, and well tolerated. Mothers preferred home phototherapy over in-hospital phototherapy with benefits of improved infant feeding bonding, reduced maternal stress, home comforts and earlier resumption of normal family life for the father and sibling with extended family offering support.