Maternal Counseling for Preterm Deliveries, Assessing an Effective Method of Counseling

Progress in the frontiers of neonatology has continually pushed back the limit of viability and significantly improved the survival of extremely preterm infants. An important component of medical management before a preterm delivery is counseling the parents about probabilities of survival and long term complications.

Hypothesis: Preterm counseling is more effective when parents receive verbal counseling supplemented with written and pictorial information then verbal counseling alone.

Methodology: There will be two groups of study (verbal, pictorial and written vs verbal alone). All patients admitted to the L and D department of Stroger hospital between 23 to 34 weeks of gestation with threatened premature delivery will be enrolled in the study. They will be randomly assigned to 1 of 2 groups. After counseling, parents will be asked to complete a 32 point questionnaire to check their knowledge of outcomes of prematurity.

To reach statistically significant results, the investigators will need 40 patients in each group. The study will be done over a period of one year