Prenatal Education Strategies

It is important for women to maintain a healthy lifestyle during pregnancy for their baby and their own safety. Patient education is necessary during pregnancy to enable patients avoid unhealthy practices that may harm their child and their own health. Pregnant women should ensure they consume healthy diets. A balanced diet is essential to avoid too much weight gain during pregnancy. Further, pregnant women are also advised to avoid certain foods and drinks. Pregnant women should avoid taking foods with high levels of vitamin A because it can harm the baby. Foods with a lot of listeria are also harmful to the baby and to the mother as well (Youngkin et al, 2012).

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Drugs can cause negative effects for the pregnant mother and the unborn baby. Pregnant women are advised to avoid some legal and illegal drugs during pregnancy. Caffeine increases the risk of pregnant women having miscarriages and it may cause defects on the baby during birth. It is essential for pregnant women to limit their caffeine intake to a maximum of 300 mg daily ((Whitaker et al, 2016). Consequently, pregnant women should seek doctors advice before taking various medications. Some medicines may harm the unborn child or cause adverse effects on the mother because of their condition. Common medications such as laxatives, antihistamines, and painkillers should be taken after seeking advice from health professionals.

Pregnant women should refrain from smoking completely. This is essential for the health of the mother and the unborn child. Cigarettes contain tobacco with is made up of poisonous chemicals. These chemicals can pass into the babys blood stream. Therefore, pregnant women and their partners should avoid smoking to protect the health of the unborn child. Moreover, smoking also affects the health of the child even after they are born. Children raised with parents who smoke in their presence are at the increased risk of developing asthma, chest infections, and slow brain development (Susan et al, 2016). Alcohol consumption is also prohibited for pregnant women. Alcohol consumption can affect the health of the developing baby. Further, alcohol can cause severe abnormality problems for the developing child since their bodies cannot process alcohol. It also increases the chances of a mother having miscarriage (Tharpe et al, 2016).

Smoking is very risky for pregnant women. Cigarettes are addictive and hard to stop at once. Thus, some women may find it hard to refrain from taking cigarettes during pregnancy. It is essential to educate these women on the dangers of smoking during pregnancy and ways of containing their addiction. Planning pregnancy is necessary for women to make all the right health preparations (Hyde et al, 2016). There are different medications available to help women who smoke quit. These medications include nicotine replacement therapy, which reduces the consumption of tobacco when smoking.

Most of the women who engage in unhealthy practices during pregnancy are those who do not afford medical services. Therefore, the target populations for the anti-smoking program are women in poor populations and teenage girls who are pregnant. My program will use various education pieces to reach out to women in marginalized communities who cannot afford medical services. The media channels that we will use entail posters, flyers, and public service announcements to sensitize the community on importance of quitting smoking during pregnancy. Our campaign aims at using community based clinics to reach out to these patient populations. Further, we can also combine resources with federal and local agencies, and other private stakeholders who are interested in the campaign to promote prenatal care awareness.

Education programs are necessary to engage patients in a social learning environment. Programs such as hearing and asking questions are important in addressing social problems between health professionals and pregnant women. Further, learning and discussing programs are also helpful in education pregnant women in marginalized communities. This is also effective since there is a personal appeal compared to the use of flyers and posters. It is also essential to engage patients with a similar problem in a share and support each other program. This is because most women who already engage in substance abuse during pregnancy may find it hard to stop (Eldredge et al, 2016). These women can be supported using social programs that bring pregnant women with smoking addiction problems together to share their experiences and support each other to refrain from smoking.

I chose to pursue the smoking during pregnancy education topic because smoking is one of the largest, preventable, caused of death in the United States. Smoking related problems accrue for high death rates and medication costs in the United States. The National Center for Disease Control and Prevention states that approximately 16.8% of adults in the United States are cigarette smokers (Creanga et al, 2015). Smoking is common among young pregnant women compared to old women. Problems such as infant retardation, low birth weight, infant mortality, and premature birth are high among pregnant women who smoke cigarettes. I chose to use posters, flyers, and educational programs to conduct patient-education to pregnant mothers because my target population comprises of young women and women in poor communities.

Flyers and posters will help me sensitize the public prenatal education. Further, flyers and posters will enable us reach out to a diverse population and broadcast our patient education and support programs to the community at large. These education media channels will help the community to understand what our program entail and the objectives of our patient education programs. Moreover, flyers and posters can be used as education supplements to patients in most health institutions.

References

Creanga, A. A., Berg, C. J., Syverson, C., Seed, K., Bruce, F. C., & Callaghan, W. M. (2015). Pregnancy-related mortality in the United States, 20062010. Obstetrics & Gynecology, 125(1), 5-12.

Eldredge, L. K. B., Markham, C. M., Kok, G., Ruiter, R. A., & Parcel, G. S. (2016). Planning health promotion programs: an intervention mapping approach. John Wiley & Sons.

Hyde, N. K., Brennan-Olsen, S. L., Bennett, K., Moloney, D. J., & Pasco, J. A. (2016). Maternal Nutrition During Pregnancy: Intake of Nutrients Important for Bone Health. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 1-7.

Susan, J., Mallan, K., Callaway, L., Daniels, L. A., & Nicholson, J. M. (2016). A Cross Sectional Comparison of Predisposing, Reinforcing and Enabling Factors for Lifestyle Health Behaviours and Weight Gain in Healthy and Overweight Pregnant Women. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 1-10.

Tharpe, N. L., Farley, C. L., & Jordan, R. G. (2016). Clinical practice guidelines for midwifery & women's health. Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Whitaker, R., Hendry, M., Rabeea'h Aslam, A. B., Carter, B., Charles, J. M., Craine, N., & Rycroft-Malone, J. (2016). Intervention Now to Eliminate Repeat Unintended Pregnancy in Teenagers (INTERUPT): a systematic review of intervention effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, and qualitative and realist synthesis of implementation factors and user engagement. Health technology assessment (Winchester, England), 20(16), 1.

Youngkin, E., Davis, M., Schadewald, D., & Juve, C. (2012). Women's health: A primary care clinical guide. Pearson Higher Ed.