<p> <b>Background:</b> There have been significant gains in smoking cessation among pregnant women, but the rate of postpartum relapse remains high. Smoking is harmful to both the mother and child's health and women need to be educated about the risk of relapse and effective strategies to remain smoke free. The high rate of early postpartum relapse suggests that interventions must take place soon after delivery. Perinatal nurses are in the ideal position to begin the introduction of relapse prevention strategies, but many do not feel confident in providing these interventions. Despite evidence that nurses can be effective in providing tobacco counseling, few nurses actually follow through with recommended guidelines and assist and arrange follow up care. </p><p> <b>Methods:</b> A multi-site, interventional study was conducted using a pre-test/post-test design. A total of 162 perinatal nurses from four hospitals participated in a smoking cessation and relapse prevention counseling education program. Participants completed pre, post and one month follow up tests assessing perceived knowledge, attitude, self-efficacy, and behavior toward smoking cessation and relapse prevention counseling in the postpartum period. Descriptive statistics were used to characterize respondents; one way repeated ANOVAs were used to evaluate differences in scores on attitude, self-efficacy, knowledge and behavior. </p><p> <b>Results:</b> There was a significant increase in scores on knowledge, self-efficacy and behavior from pretest to follow up test. Although quitline referral scores increased from pre to follow-up test, the scores were very low. There were no significant differences in scores related to participant age, years of experience or level of education. OB nurses had significantly higher scores than neonatal nurses on all constructs. </p><p> <b>Conclusions/Implications:</b> Results indicate that a brief educational program is effective in increasing perinatal nurses' tobacco counseling knowledge, self-efficacy and behavior. Specific tobacco counseling educational programs for neonatal nurses need to be developed. Interventions are needed to increase nurses' quitline referrals for postpartum women at risk of smoking relapse.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:3630854 |
| Date | 13 October 2015 |
| Creators | Feeney, Ann Elizabeth Tully |
| Publisher | State University of New York at Binghamton |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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