Women's birth experiences are heavily influenced by perinatal nurses and their care, yet the voices of these nurses have not been represented fully in nursing research. Nurses in this study reported multiple challenges in the provision of supportive care for their patients, and a wider dialogue on this topic within perinatal nursing is warranted. More research is needed on this topic, and intervention studies documenting innovative methods of teaching, orienting, and continually educating these nurses should be undertaken.

Giving students the opportunity to interact with nurse experts in an individual, informal setting is a useful educational strategy that increases knowledge, promotes socialization to the nursing profession, and offers students opportunities for professional networking.

Couples making the transition to parenthood experience challenges that can threaten the quality and stability of their relationships and the health of family members. Currently, the educational infrastructure to support the delivery of couple-relationship education during the transition to parenthood is limited. Because new-parent couples interact with the health care system at many points during this transition time, an opportunity exists for strengthening couple relationships within the system to improve the well-being of adults and children. In this article, we propose a productive collaboration between marriage/couple educators and health care systems to integrate couple-relationship education into the standard of perinatal care.