Women's experience with early labour management at home vs. in hospital: A randomised controlled trial

Objective: to compare experiences with early labour assessment and support at home vs. by telephone. Design: a randomised controlled trial of nurse home visits vs. telephone support for assessment and support of women in early labour. Setting: hospitals serving obstetrical populations in metropolitan and suburban Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Participants: healthy nulliparous women in labour at term with uncomplicated pregnancies participating in the third and fourth year of the trial. Intervention: women were randomised to receive early labour assessment and support at home (n=241) and or to receive assessment and support by telephone (n=182). Measurement: the Early Labour Experience Questionnaire (ELEQ), a 26-item self-administered questionnaire that measures women's experience with early labour care across three domains: emotional well-being, emotional distress and perceptions of nursing care. Findings: women who received home visits rated their early labour experience more positively overall compared to women who received telephone support (103.14 +/- 12.45 vs. 99.67 +/- 13.11, p <.01)including perceptions of nursing care that they received (38.64 +/- 2.90 vs. 36.82 +/- 4.09, p <.001). However, women's affective experiences did not differ. Key conclusions: early labour nursing care provided at home is associated with a more positive experience of early labour compared to telephone support. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.