Parental Prevention of Newborn Pain: Evaluation of an eHealth Learning Platform on Parent-Led Management of Infant Procedural Pain

Newborn babies routinely require painful procedures to ensure they are healthy. Sadly, despite known ways to relieve their pain, many do not receive any form of treatment. Untreated pain can affect how these babies feel and react to later pain, how their brains grow and impact development. Research has found many ways that parents can reduce their baby's pain, such as breastfeeding. With today's technological advancements, there is growing evidence that printed educational materials are often set aside and parents now turn to websites on the Internet to search for health information. Since websites are not always accurate, it is important for care areas to meet parents informational needs by offering user-friendly, evidence-based education. However, no studies have examined if parental confidence and capacity to manage their baby's pain is influenced by the method of education. The proposed study will be conducted in three phases. 1) Adapt an existing eHealth learning program to target parents of healthy term babies. This program aims to educate parents on all aspects of newborn pain care during procedures. 2) Parents will test and provide an assessment of ease of use and acceptability of the adapted program. 3) Determine if the eHealth learning program helps parents learn demonstrated by their increased knowledge, confidence and participation in pain management and reduced newborn pain. This study will recruit 140 participants anticipated to give birth to a healthy full-term baby. At a prenatal appointment, these parents will be randomized to receive either 1) the adapted program or 2) standard care. After the birth of their baby, we will evaluate the impact of the eHealth learning program on parental knowledge and confidence in pain care, the frequency of parent-led pain care interventions, and parental usage of the learning materials.