Heather Georgiou, RN is the Director of Nursing at Soundview Pregnancy Services in metro New York. She shares her experience becoming a Certified HUG Teacher.
As Director of Nursing for a non profit pregnancy center that offers free services to expecting moms and dads, I was looking for a program that could be offered to both moms and dads who are seeking to learn about newborn care. We currently offer a newborn care program that is tailored to moms and to teaching hands on skills with medical mannekins. I was looking for something that was more geared towards understanding baby’s behavior and helping to avoid misperceptions of normal behavior as being abnormal. The HUG program fit in perfectly with what I was looking to accomplish. It really fit the need of both moms and dads preparing to care for a newborn or currently adjusting to caring for a newborn.
In addition to the program content being very simple for parents to understand and begin using right away, as a Certified Health Education Specialist I really appreciated how beautifully simple the program is to implement. Having the script and powerpoint already carefully crafted and ready to use was a huge blessing to me. Having all the necessary resources included in the program made it quick and easy to add this program to our repertoire of classes offered. The class has been a great addition to the services we offer and the response from parents has been very positive. Great content and easy to implement, thank you Jan for all the work you put into this program so that young families can achieve the positive outcomes they are hoping for!