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Development and pilot test of a smartphone app for midwifery care in Tanzania: A comparative cross-sectional study

To address Tanzania’s high maternal mortality ratio, it is crucial to increase women’s access to healthcare. To improve access, the quality of antenatal care needs to be improved. Therefore, we conducted a pilot study of a smartphone app for midwives and examined its potential effects on the learnin...

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Autores principales: Shimpuku, Yoko, Mwilike, Beatrice, Mwakawanga, Dorkasi, Ito, Keiko, Hirose, Naoki, Kubota, Kazumi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10065243/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37000830
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283808
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author Shimpuku, Yoko
Mwilike, Beatrice
Mwakawanga, Dorkasi
Ito, Keiko
Hirose, Naoki
Kubota, Kazumi
author_facet Shimpuku, Yoko
Mwilike, Beatrice
Mwakawanga, Dorkasi
Ito, Keiko
Hirose, Naoki
Kubota, Kazumi
author_sort Shimpuku, Yoko
collection PubMed
description To address Tanzania’s high maternal mortality ratio, it is crucial to increase women’s access to healthcare. To improve access, the quality of antenatal care needs to be improved. Therefore, we conducted a pilot study of a smartphone app for midwives and examined its potential effects on the learning outcomes of midwives and birth preparedness of pregnant women in Tanzania. This mixed-methods, pilot study provided an educational app for midwives in the intervention group, obtained data about the continuous use of the app, measured midwives’ learning outcomes, directed focus group discussions on the usability of the app, and conducted surveys among pregnant women about birth preparedness in the intervention and control groups to evaluate if midwives provided proper information to them. The control group received regular antenatal care and answered the same survey. Participants were 23 midwives who participated in the testing and provided learning outcome data. Twenty-one participated in focus group discussions. Results showed that 87.5% of midwives continued to study with the app two months post-intervention. A mini-quiz conducted after using the app showed a significant increase in mean scores (6.9 and 8.4 points, respectively) and a non-significant increase on the questionnaire on women-centered care (98.6 and 102.2 points, respectively). In the focus group discussions, all midwives expressed satisfaction with the app for several reasons, including comprehensive content, feelings of confidence, and reciprocal communication. There were 207 pregnant women included in the analysis. The intervention group had significantly higher knowledge scores and home-based value scores than did controls. The total scores and other subscales did not show statistical significance for group differences. The results indicate the potential impact of the midwifery education app when it is implemented on a larger scale, especially considering that the results show a potential effect on midwives’ learning outcomes.
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spelling pubmed-100652432023-04-01 Development and pilot test of a smartphone app for midwifery care in Tanzania: A comparative cross-sectional study Shimpuku, Yoko Mwilike, Beatrice Mwakawanga, Dorkasi Ito, Keiko Hirose, Naoki Kubota, Kazumi PLoS One Research Article To address Tanzania’s high maternal mortality ratio, it is crucial to increase women’s access to healthcare. To improve access, the quality of antenatal care needs to be improved. Therefore, we conducted a pilot study of a smartphone app for midwives and examined its potential effects on the learning outcomes of midwives and birth preparedness of pregnant women in Tanzania. This mixed-methods, pilot study provided an educational app for midwives in the intervention group, obtained data about the continuous use of the app, measured midwives’ learning outcomes, directed focus group discussions on the usability of the app, and conducted surveys among pregnant women about birth preparedness in the intervention and control groups to evaluate if midwives provided proper information to them. The control group received regular antenatal care and answered the same survey. Participants were 23 midwives who participated in the testing and provided learning outcome data. Twenty-one participated in focus group discussions. Results showed that 87.5% of midwives continued to study with the app two months post-intervention. A mini-quiz conducted after using the app showed a significant increase in mean scores (6.9 and 8.4 points, respectively) and a non-significant increase on the questionnaire on women-centered care (98.6 and 102.2 points, respectively). In the focus group discussions, all midwives expressed satisfaction with the app for several reasons, including comprehensive content, feelings of confidence, and reciprocal communication. There were 207 pregnant women included in the analysis. The intervention group had significantly higher knowledge scores and home-based value scores than did controls. The total scores and other subscales did not show statistical significance for group differences. The results indicate the potential impact of the midwifery education app when it is implemented on a larger scale, especially considering that the results show a potential effect on midwives’ learning outcomes. Public Library of Science 2023-03-31 /pmc/articles/PMC10065243/ /pubmed/37000830 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283808 Text en © 2023 Shimpuku et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Shimpuku, Yoko
Mwilike, Beatrice
Mwakawanga, Dorkasi
Ito, Keiko
Hirose, Naoki
Kubota, Kazumi
Development and pilot test of a smartphone app for midwifery care in Tanzania: A comparative cross-sectional study
title Development and pilot test of a smartphone app for midwifery care in Tanzania: A comparative cross-sectional study
title_full Development and pilot test of a smartphone app for midwifery care in Tanzania: A comparative cross-sectional study
title_fullStr Development and pilot test of a smartphone app for midwifery care in Tanzania: A comparative cross-sectional study
title_full_unstemmed Development and pilot test of a smartphone app for midwifery care in Tanzania: A comparative cross-sectional study
title_short Development and pilot test of a smartphone app for midwifery care in Tanzania: A comparative cross-sectional study
title_sort development and pilot test of a smartphone app for midwifery care in tanzania: a comparative cross-sectional study
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10065243/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37000830
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283808
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