Evidence of adequacy of postpartum care for immigrant women.

The purpose of this pilot study was to ascertain the need for a large-scale investigation of the adequacy of postpartum care for immigrant women in whom health and/or social concerns have been identified. A descriptive, cross-sectional design was used to gather data from hospital and community health records of 22 immigrant women who had been found to have health or social concerns requiring a longer than usual postpartum hospital stay (more than 36 hours). The results show that 40% to 100% of concerns were not recorded as having been resolved and 30% to 100% of families were not recorded as having received optimal care as defined in the literature. Even allowing for measurement error due to recording failures, the paucity of recorded data to support adequacy of care for specific concerns and adequacy of postpartum care suggests that immigrant women may be receiving sub-optimal care in the postpartum period. Therefore a larger, more definitive investigation of these issues is imperative.