Exploring parents experience of child health reviews with health visitors using video consultations: a Hermeneutic Phenomenological Approach.

Background: Health visitors deliver the Healthy Child Programme to children under five, involving five reviews: antenatal, birth, six-to-eight weeks, one and two years. During COVID-19, health visitors engaged with parents using video for the first time as lockdowns forced professionals to alter their working to keep safe. Little is known about this way of engaging for health visitors and families. Method: A Heideggerian interpretative hermeneutic phenomenological study using unstructured interviews and in-depth data analysis using guidance by Dibley et al and the Diekelmann et al framework. Ten parents in England who had experience of video consultations with a health visitor, were recruited using social media and snowballing. Findings: Ten themes, three were constitutive patterns, present in all interviews, five relational themes, prominent in most interviews. The key finding was parents felt that health visitors were unable to assess their child over the screen so the burden of responsibility was on their shoulders, and they worried their reporting might be inaccurate, or something might get missed. Technical issues, logistics and being a tick box exercise were also patterns. The patterns were considered using Heideggerian concepts which helped reveal the phenomenon and meaning the parents had attributed to their experience with ‘technology’ and ‘presence’ being the prescient philosophical notions. Conclusion: The experience of video consultations was different for each parent, but all felt the burden of responsibility to report to the health visitor. Recommendations for practice include adopting a conversational style.