Jennifer Bute

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/1805/26671

COVID-19 Birth Stories

In this year-long project, Professor Bute and her research partner, Professor Maria Brann, first conducted focus groups with women across the country who had given birth during a time when their state or local governments had issued stay-at-home orders because of the COVID pandemic. Then, they followed up a year later by interviewing the same women individually to learn more about raising a newborn during a pandemic.

The researchers found that the isolation of stay-at-home orders and changes in health care policies, such as limitations on hospital visitors and in-person appointments, had a profound effect on women. Women discussed in detail the mental health challenges they faced, such as postpartum depression and anxiety, that they felt were heightened because of the pandemic. Women also discussed the challenges of navigating who had access to visit or hold their newborn, which involved keeping their babies safe while contending with family expectations about seeing the baby. The women who participated in the study were grateful for the opportunity to connect with other women with similar experiences to know that they are not alone. They provided recommendations for helping pregnant women and new moms who are navigating motherhood in an unprecedented time, and even spoke to the media about this project so that other women would feel supported.

Professor Bute's translation of research into supportive groups for new mothers is another excellent example of how IUPUI's faculty members are TRANSLATING their RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 35

Development of a patient-centric food allergy research program: A model for action
(Wiley, 2018) Bute, Jennifer J.; Broome, S. Brantlee; Marcus, Jessica N.; Mikulcik, Sandy; Vickery, Brian; Communication Studies, School of Liberal Arts
Communicating to promote informed decisions in the context of early pregnancy loss
(Elsevier, 2017) Brann, Maria; Bute, Jennifer J.; Communication Studies, School of Liberal Arts
Objective. To evaluate residents’ ability to engage standardized patients in informed decision making during a pregnancy loss scenario. Methods. Forty patient encounters between interns and standardized patients were coded to assess informed decision-making practices, exploration of unexpressed concerns, and support provision. Results. Interns engaged in minimum informed decision making but did not address all of the communicative elements necessary for informed decisions, and most elements were only partially addressed. Patients in this study did not receive information about all management options, their concerns were not addressed, and there was limited support communicated for their decision. Conclusion. This study offers an initial assessment of a communicative approach to evaluate and improve decision making during early pregnancy loss. A comprehensive approach to making informed decisions must include discussion of all management options, exploration of patient preferences and concerns, and support for the patient’s decision. Practice Implications. Healthcare providers could benefit from communication skills training to communicate more effectively with patients to help them make more informed decisions.
Parents’ Communication Work in the Management of Food Allergies
(Taylor & Francis, 2021-02-02) Bute, Jennifer J.; Bowers, Clarissa; Park, Daniel; Communication Studies, School of Liberal Arts
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) has identified food allergies as a critical public health issue that significantly affects quality of life for patients and their families. Despite the crisis-level status of food allergies, especially in children, there are currently no curative treatments. As a result, impacted families must learn how to carry the burden of disease management. Using an expanded application of the concept of communication work, this study features data from interviews with 26 parents of food allergic children and explores how parents navigate the nuances of food allergy maintenance while negotiating and preserving valued relationships and identities through everyday talk. Results revealed that parents used communication to legitimate food allergy, balance potential face-threats with identity and relational goals, and coordinate care with spouses. Due to the lack of therapeutic treatment options, we found that parents utilize communication work, which is both demanding and effortful, as a form of disease management.
Public and Private Revisited: Storied Reflections from a Food Allergy Parent
(Taylor & Francis, 2020-02-24) Bute, Jennifer J.; Communication Studies, School of Liberal Arts
Qualitative Assessment of Bad News Delivery Practices during Miscarriage Diagnosis
(SAGE, 2020) Brann, Maria; Bute, Jennifer J.; Foxworthy Scott, Susanna; Communication Studies, School of Liberal Arts
Miscarriage is one of the most common pregnancy complications health care providers discuss with patients. Previous research suggests that women’s distress is compounded by ineffective communication with providers, who are usually not trained to deliver bad news using patient-centered dialogue. The purpose of this study was to use a patient-centered approach to examine women’s experiences with and perspectives of communication during a miscarriage to assist in the development of communication training tools for health care providers. During focus groups, 22 women who had experienced miscarriage discussed video-recorded standardized patient-provider interactions and recalled communication during their own miscarriages. Results of a pragmatic iterative analysis of the transcripts suggest training techniques and communication behaviors that should guide education for providers to deliver the diagnosis of and treatment options for early pregnancy loss, such as demonstrating empathy, creating space for processing, checking for understanding, and avoiding medical jargon and emotionally charged language.
The Influence of Everyday Interpersonal Communication on the Medical Encounter: An Extension of Street’s Ecological Model
(Taylor & Francis, 2018-06-03) Head, Katharine J.; Bute, Jennifer J.; Communication Studies, School of Liberal Arts
Street’s ecological model has shaped the research-examining communication during medical encounters for over a decade. Although the model accounts for the variety of contexts that shape the conversations in which patients and health-care providers engage, the model does not adequately address the way that everyday conversations about health carry over into patient–provider interactions. In this essay, we propose an extension of Street’s model that adds the context of everyday communication about health as a contributing factor in the medical encounter. We support the need for this extension by discussing research that points to the ways these conversations with our social network influence communication during the medical encounter and propose new areas for research based on this extension.
Food allergies are a public health crisis we can no longer ignore
(2017-09-19) Bute, Jennifer J.; Gutierrez, Meghan
Let’s break the silence about miscarriages
(2014-10-10) Bute, Jennifer J.; Brann, Maria
Tensions and Contradictions in Interns’ Communication about Unexpected Pregnancy Loss
(Taylor & Francis, 2019) Bute, Jennifer J.; Brann, Maria; Communication Studies, School of Liberal Arts
Early miscarriage is an unexpected pregnancy complication that affects up to 25% of pregnant women. Physicians are often tasked with delivering the bad news of a pregnancy loss to asymptomatic women while also helping them make an informed decision about managing the miscarriage. Assessing the communicative responses, particularly the discursive tensions embedded within providers’ speech, offers insight into the (in)effective communication used in the delivery of bad news and the management of a potentially traumatic medical event. We observed and analyzed transcripts from 40 standardized patient encounters using Baxter’s relational dialectics theory 2.0. Results indicated that interns invoked two primary distal already-spoken discourses: discourses of medicalization of miscarriage and discourses of rationality and informed consent. We contend that tensions and contradictions could affect how women respond to the news of an impending miscarriage and offer practical implications for communication skills training.
Exploring societal-level privacy rules for talking about miscarriage
(Sage, 2019) Bute, Jennifer J.; Brann, Maria; Hernandez, Rachael; Communication Studies, School of Liberal Arts
Communication privacy management (CPM) theory posits that culturally specific understandings of privacy guide how people manage private information in everyday conversations. We use the context of miscarriage to demonstrate how societal-level expectations about (in)appropriate topics of talk converge with micro-level decisions about privacy rules and privacy boundary management. More specifically, we explore how people’s perceptions of broad social rules about the topic of miscarriage influence their disclosure decisions. Based on interviews with 20 couples who have experienced pregnancy loss, we examined how couples described miscarriage as a topic that is bound by societal-level expectations about whether and how this subject should be discussed in interpersonal conversations. Participants reflected on their perceptions of societal-level privacy rules for protecting information about their miscarriage experiences and described how these rules affected their own privacy management decisions. We discuss these findings in terms of CPM’s theoretical tools for linking macro-level discourses to everyday talk.

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