title: Tender Beginnings program: an educational continuum for the maternity patient.
abstract: The Tender Beginnings program demonstrates a comprehensive educational plan for maternity patients that can be extended throughout pregnancy, the birth process, and into the postpartum period. In today's healthcare environment, where the maternity patient continues to experience a shortened stay structure, the hurried learning process that is absorbed over a 48-hour stay is often ineffectual. This program provides a strategy and framework for effective teaching that can be successfully implemented all through the peripartum period. Budgetary constraints have given way to an innovative approach and opportunity for the healthcare specialist to explore an entrepreneurial relationship within the structure of the program. The Tender Beginnings program has proven to be a true integration of community educational outreach, nurse entrepreneurship, hospital-based education, and postpartum/neonatal follow-up.
authors.affiliation: Department of Women and Children's Services, Greenwich Hospital, CT 06830, USA. Suebr@greenhosp.org
authors.forename: Susan E H
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Brown
mesh_terms: D001942:Breast Feeding; D003159:Community-Institutional Relations; D003237:Connecticut; D016520:Entrepreneurship; D005260:Female; D006699:Home Care Services; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008427:Maternal Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration*; D016389:Maternal-Child Nursing / Q000379:methods*; D010353:Patient Education as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D011247:Pregnancy; D016730:Program Development