A new father, whose baby boy went from the delivery room straight to the neonatal intensive care unit, recently shared one piece of advice with me: take notes on what the doctors say about your baby’s condition because chances are you’re not going to remember. As the conduit to his extended family in the waiting room and on the phone—asking questions left and right about his wife and the newborn—he is glad that he did. After two months, he still has the scrap of paper on which he wrote everything down.

The joy and stress of a complicated birth can be overwhelming and new parents don’t often know what to think, or remember, what they hear from doctors immediately following delivery. Researchers in the NICU of a North Queensland hospital in Australia set out to study the effects of audio recordings of mothers’ conversations with their neonatal care providers on how well they recalled information and their psychological well-being. The study, published online this week at BMJ.com, shows that the use of audio recordings improves recall significantly, but postnatal depression, anxiety and stress about parenting showed no significant differences between the group with the recording and the group without.

In the randomized trial, 102 mothers had recordings of their conversations with their neonatologist; 98 mothers who didn’t represented the control group. All participants had infants in the NICU and were asked how well they recalled information about diagnosis, tests, treatment and outcome of their infants, and also about attitudes and use of the tape, postpartum depression, anxiety, general health and stress about parenting at 10 days, four months and one year. At four months—having listened to the tape at least twice—mothers were more than 75% more likely than moms in the control group to recall information about treatment (59% versus 34%). Although small in number, mothers of babies with poor outcomes were significantly more satisfied with the conversations than mothers of babies with good outcomes and recalled more than mothers of babies with poor outcomes in the control group. The study notes that six mothers, all in the control group, did not remember anything that had been said during the conversations.

What it means: Mothers, fathers and family members can benefit from recorded conversations with neonatal care specialists—something that anyone can do on their own with access to a recording device. After the initial stress subsides, doctors’ terminology and explanations can be listened to in greater detail. While the recordings did not improve mothers’ well-being or satisfaction with the neonatologist, other studies can be done—including fathers, for instance—to further measure the effects of this simple and useful intervention. 

From the Archive:

 Nov. 13, 2006: Ahead of Their Time
Oct. 18, 2004: Born Too Soon