A Safe Place for Newborns 

Policy development and form content, to include long copy, microcopy and directions, in order to ensure compliance with Oregon Law

 The challenge

Oregon’s “A Safe Place for Newborns” law requires that all hospitals and safe surrender sites maintain up-to-date policies, forms and information for hospital staff and patients. Required documents include (1) a hospital policy outlining staff and hospital obligations under the law, (2) a Letter to Parents, (3) a Voluntary Health Questionnaire, (4) a Drop-Off Report Form, and (5) a list of local DHS office contact numbers and addresses

Timeline: October 2020 - September 2021

My role: Lead policy owner and content developer. As social work has an integral role in the implementation of these workflows, my role as the Social Work Manager was to develop written documents that were in compliance with Oregon Law with input from stakeholders, including nurses, physicians, hospital administrators, public safety officers, and other social workers. I co-facilitated a series of meetings designed to gather input on proposed workflows and form content, encouraged collaborative decision-making, and met ongoing project deadlines to ensure the timely rollout of new workflows.

Programs utilized: Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Teams, Google Docs, Webex, Box

Research

My first step as the policy owner was to gather important foundational information, to include current state (hospital workflows, existing policies and forms), stakeholders (identified as healthcare professionals who would have a role in this workflow) and legal requirements (investigation into the content and expectations of the Oregon “A Safe Place for Newborns Law.”

Methodology

  • Competitive audit: I pulled information from the official Oregon.gov site and reviewed other authorized safe surrender sites such as other local hospitals. I completed a spreadsheet including information on the components of these agencies’ policies, form content, workflows, and review process

  • User research:

    • I facilitated virtual meetings with hospital stakeholders, which included Emergency Department physicians, nurses, hospital leadership, patient advocates, health unit coordinators, public safety officers, and other social workers, in order to understand current practice and staff familiarity with their obligations under Oregon Law

    • I shared the current hospital policy and forms via Box and requested feedback on content

Conclusions included:

  • Most hospital staff had limited familiarity with current policy and legal requirements and stated that they would have to reach out to a supervisor if an infant was surrendered at the hospital

  • Most local agencies’ policies are out-of-date and have not been recently reviewed

  • Content from the prior hospital policy was largely compliant with Oregon law but needed updating to reflect best practices for hospital staff

 Process

Low fidelity focuments

I completed first-draft low fidelity documents in order to receive stakeholders feedback on form content.

Forms and policies were uploaded to Box and sent to stakeholders, with a requested timeline for feedback.

Document standardization and final iterations

After receiving user feedback, I moved form and policy content to standard policy templates that were in line with hospital “brand” guidelines (font, layout and standardized headers and sub-headers).

Once documents had been standardized, they were submitted to our organizational policy storage platform. Co-policy owners were asked to approve the policy within the review platform.

Rollout

Once the policy was finalized and approved, I met with stakeholders to discuss strategies for socializing workflow information with all staff to whom it applied. As early user research showed limited familiarity with this particular policy, we agreed that this was an important step in the process in order to improve awareness and policy compliance moving forward. We agreed on a three-point approach: (1) Managers would update their staff on the new policy in their weekly staff meetings or huddles; (2) Managers would email information out to all staff; (3) Training on this policy would be added to New Employee Orientation.

Impact

This body of work was essential to ensuring that the hospital is complying with legal requirements, and that parents are able to surrender their infants safely, securely and without judgment in scenarios where surrender is their best or only option.  

Conclusions

Also this project was not specifically UX Writing, I believe it highlights the strengths and experience that I bring to a UX Writing role:

  • Writing copy (long form, microcopy, directions)

  • Working within brand guidelines

  • Coordinating with cross-functional teams to complete a project that works for a diverse group of users

  • Completing user research

  • Complex problem solving

  • Task completion with set deadlines while juggling multiple obligations

  • Use of technology to support remote work and collaboration