Identifying preeclampsia through patient education: A quality improvement initiative

Preeclampsia is a major problem in the United States that increased risk of neonatal and maternal morbidity and mortality. Will educating patient and support persons that accompany patients to clinic visits increase awareness of early signs and symptoms of preeclampsia? This quality improvement initiative will consist of a pretest on preeclampsia, followed by an educational sheet on preeclampsia, and then a posttest to confirm successful education. This confirmation should result in a sample size of 80 with an 80% power to detect a mean of paired differences of 0.2 with an estimated standard deviation of differences of 0.6 and with a significance level of 0.05 using a two-sided paired t-test. Validation of success is measured by an increase of 20% on the posttest. The findings will suggest that educating patients and support persons should result in seeking early medical attention when signs and symptoms of preeclampsia arise.