Hello again readers!
As we shared in our last post, we’ve received feedback from 120 health care practitioners about their experience with Pregnets. Overall, they find our website to be shareable, reliable, useful and relevant!
We already know that women find blogging for Pregnets beneficial as it provides them with an opportunity for self-reflection, connection with peers, and a boost in social support. But health care practitioners can also benefit from reading the Pregnets blog! From their responses to our feedback survey, we learned that one out of six health care practitioners use Pregnets to read our blog. Why?
The Pregnets blog is a rich source of knowledge for health care practitioners to learn about women’s lived experiences with smoking or being smoke-free before, during and after pregnancy. A dietician from a public health unit in central west Ontario reported liking “hearing others’ stories” from the blog; a nurse at a central east public health unit also read the blog to learn “what other women are experiencing.” We are pleased to know that health care practitioners can use the Pregnets blog to better understand their patients, which hopefully translates to more appropriate, empathetic, and supportive care. Beyond being a source of information, the Pregnets blog can be used as a tool for informing practice and relating to patients. As one family health team nurse expressed: “insights that are shared through the blog are ones that are often difficult to share face to face in a group situation. They provide great ideas of topics to raise with our groups.”
Health care practitioners are also using the Pregnets blog because they recognize its value to their patients. One nurse respondent believes “participating in the blog has been very empowering for [her clinic’s] clients.” Over half of practitioners reported recommending Pregnets to their clients, including one nurse who specifically recommends the blog to her patients because “it helps them to not feel alone in the process and helps decrease feelings of guilt related to their smoking.”
Overall, we are thrilled about the value that health care practitioners believe the Pregnets blog brings to their practice. If you are not familiar with the Pregnets blog, we recommend trying out some approaches from your peers for applying the blog in a health care setting. Are you using the Pregnets blog in a different way? Please feel free to share your ideas in the comments section below!
We appreciate your continued interest and support,
~camhx\pregnets