Parenting the NICU infant: A meta-ethnographic synthesis

Mind the gap: Comparing parents' information needs about impending preterm birth to current clinical practices using a mixed methods approach

Objective

To identify parents' information needs about impending very preterm birth and compare these needs to current information practices in the Netherlands.

Methods

Step 1: We surveyed N = 203 parents of preterm infants to assess their information needs. Data were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. Step 2a: We collected information resources from hospitals (N = 9 NICUs) and via an online search. These materials were analyzed using deductive thematic analysis. Step 2b: We compared findings from Steps 1-2a.

Results

We identified four themes pertaining to parents' information needs: (1) participation in care, (2) emotional wellbeing, (3) experience/success stories, and (4) practical information about prematurity. Clinicians' communicative skills and time were considered prerequisites for optimal information-provision. Notably, hospital resources provided mainly medical information about prematurity with some emphasis on participation in care, while parent associations mainly focused on emotional wellbeing and experience/success stories.

Conclusion

While parents demonstrate clear information needs about impending very preterm birth, current information resources satisfy these partially.

Innovation

Our multidisciplinary research team included both scholars and veteran NICU parents. As such, we identified parents' information needs bottom-up. These parent-driven insights will be used to design an innovative, tailored information platform for parents about impending very preterm birth.

Parental presence, participation, and engagement in paediatric hospital care: A conceptual delineation

AIM

To delineate between the concepts of parental presence, participation, and engagement in paediatric hospital care.

DESIGN

The concepts' uses in the literature were analysed to determine attributes, influences, and relationships.

METHODS

Delineations of each concept are established and conceptual definitions are proposed following Morses' methods.

DATA SOURCES

MEDLINE (PubMed); CINAHL, PsycINFO, Sociology Source Ultimate (EBSCOhost); Embase, Scopus (Elsevier); Google Scholar. Search dates October 2021, February 2023.

RESULTS

Multinational publications dated 1991-2023 revealed these concepts represent a range of parental behaviours, beliefs, and actions, which are not always perceptible to nurses, but which are important in family-integrated care delivery. Parental presence is the state of a parent being physically and/or emotionally with their child. Parental participation reflects parents' performing caregiving activities with or without nurses. Parental engagement is a parents' state of emotional involvement in their child's health and the ways they act on their child's behalf.

CONCLUSION

These concepts' manifestations are important to parental role attainment but may be inadequately understood and considered by healthcare providers.

IMPLICATIONS

Nurses have influence over parents' parental presence, participation, and engagement in their child's care but need support from healthcare institutions to ensure equitable family-integrated care delivery.

IMPACT

Problem: Lack of clear definition among these concepts results in incomplete and at times inequitable family-integrated care delivery.

FINDINGS

Parental presence is an antecedent to parental participation, and parental presence and participation are elements of parental engagement. The concepts interact to influence one another.

IMPACT

Hospitalized children, their families, nurses, and researchers will benefit through a better understanding of the concepts' attributes, interactions, and implications for enhanced family-integrated care delivery.

Studying the Experience of Care Through Latent Class Analysis: An Application to Italian Neonatal Intensive Care Units

Though many data on the experience of care of patients and caregivers are collected, they are rarely used to improve the quality of health care delivery. One of the main causes is the widespread struggle in interpreting and enhancing these data, requiring the introduction of new techniques to extract intelligible, meaningful, and actionable information. This research explores the potentiality of the latent class analysis (LCA) statistical model in studying experience data. A cross-sectional survey was administered to 482 parents of infants hospitalized in several Italian neonatal intensive care units. Through a 3-step LCA, four subgroups of parents with specific experience profiles, sociodemographic characteristics, and levels of satisfaction were identified. These were composed of parents who reported (1) a positive experience (36%), (2) problematic communication with unit staff (30%), (3) limited access to the unit and poor participation in their baby's care (26%), and (4) a negative experience (8%). Through its explorative segmentation, LCA can provide valuable information to design quality improvement interventions tailored to the specific needs and concerns of each subgroup.

Effectiveness of Alberta Family-Integrated Care on Neonatal Outcomes: A Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial

Family-Integrated Care (FICare) empowers parents to play an active role as a caregiver for their infant in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). This model of care is associated with improved neonatal outcomes, such as improved weight gain and higher breastfeeding rates at discharge in infants admitted to level III NICUs; however, its effectiveness in level II NICUs remains unproven. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the model on neonatal outcomes in a cluster randomized controlled trial conducted in 10 level II NICUs randomized to Alberta FICare or standard care. Mothers and their preterm infants born between 32⁺⁰ and 34⁺⁶ weeks' gestational age were included. The primary outcome was the proportion of infants who regained their birth weight (BW) after 14 days of life. The analysis included 353 infants/308 mothers at Alberta FICare sites and 365 infants/306 mothers at standard care sites. There was no difference in the proportion of infants who had regained their BW by 14 days between the groups. A lack of perceived improved weight gain trajectory for those in the FICare group is attributed to a shorter length of hospital stay and infants being discharged prior to regaining BW.

Parents' pandemic NICU experience in the United States: a qualitative study

Background

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, parents of infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) frequently reported high levels of stress, uncertainty, and decreased parenting confidence. Early research has demonstrated that parents have had less access to their infants in the hospital due to restrictions on parental presence secondary to the pandemic. It is unknown how parents have perceived their experiences in the NICU since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to describe the lived experience of parents who had an infant in the NICU in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic to inform healthcare providers and policy makers for future development of policies and care planning.

Methods

The study design was a qualitative description of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on parents’ experiences of having an infant in the NICU. Free-text responses to open-ended questions were collected as part of a multi-method study of parents’ experiences of the NICU during the first six months of the pandemic. Participants from the United States were recruited using social media platforms between the months of May and July of 2020. Data were analyzed using a reflexive thematic approach.

Findings

Free-text responses came from 169 parents from 38 different states in the United States. Three broad themes emerged from the analysis: (1) parents’ NICU experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic were emotionally isolating and overwhelming, (2) policy changes restricting parental presence created disruptions to the family unit and limited family-centered care, and (3) interactions with NICU providers intensified or alleviated emotional distress felt by parents. A unifying theme of experiences of emotional distress attributed to COVID-19 circumstances ran through all three themes.

Conclusions

Parents of infants in the NICU during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic experienced emotional struggles, feelings of isolation, lack of family-centered care, and deep disappointment with system-level decisions. Moving forward, parents need to be considered essential partners in the development of policies concerning care of and access to their infants.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12887-021-03028-w.

Indonesian mothers' beliefs on caring practices at home for preterm babies after hospital discharge: A qualitative study

PURPOSE

Premature birth may be associated with infant health problems and frequently requires in-hospital and then at-home specialized care. Studies investigating home-caring experiences of mothers of preterm infants in developing countries are limited. This study was to explore preterm mothers' experiences of caring practices at home 1 month after their infant's discharge from a neonatal unit.

DESIGN AND METHOD

A descriptive qualitative study using in-depth interviews with eight purposively sampled mothers who had been discharged home from neonatal unit in one city in Indonesia. All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using thematic analysis.

RESULT

Three main themes emerged: (1) transition to independent motherhood, (2) focus on care of infant after discharge, and (3) barriers and enablers for care. The mothers managed their infant care at home by focusing on feeding and managing infant health problems. They faced on myth and culture as one of the barriers.

CONCLUSIONS

Comprehensive discharge education for mothers of preterm infants and their families is required to enhance mothers' caring abilities and overcome barriers is sufficient. Nurses/midwives need to improve care related to the well-being of mothers and their infants in preparation for, and after, discharge from the neonatal unit.

A meta-ethnographic study of fathers' experiences of caring for a child with a life-limiting illness

BACKGROUND

There is a growing body of qualitative studies examining parents' experiences of caring for a child with a life-limiting condition, coinciding with recent evidence that indicates an increasing incidence of paediatric life-limiting conditions. However, research focusing on fathers' needs remains sparse and is often diluted among a predominant 'mother's voice', raising questions about whether practices in clinical settings meet fathers' needs.

AIM

To provide an in-depth assembly of the current state of knowledge around fathers' experiences of caring for their children diagnosed with life-limiting conditions and understand the implications for healthcare services and policies.

DESIGN

A meta-ethnography was conducted to synthesise findings from existing qualitative studies exploring fathers' experiences of caring.

DATA SOURCES

Four electronic databases (PubMed, PsycINFO, CINAHL and Science Direct) were searched up until April 2020. Qualitative studies exploring fathers' care experience and published in English language were included. The Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) checklist was employed for study quality appraisal. No temporal limits were used.

RESULTS

Sixty-three studies met the inclusion criteria. Thirty life-limiting conditions were included. Based on responses from 496 fathers, a conceptual model was developed which translates key experiences within the fathers' caregiving journeys. The overarching concepts identified were: the paradox of support, challenges in the caring process, 'nobody thinks of men', impact on family life and the fall of the curtain: an irrevocably altered world. These and associated sub-concepts are discussed, with recommendations for future research and practice provided.

CONCLUSION

The findings indicate the value of a family-oriented approach to develop psychosocial interventions and support channels for fathers, thus empowering them whilst reducing the care-giving burden on the family unit.

Chinese Parents' Lived Experiences of having Preterm Infants in NICU: A Qualitative Study

PURPOSE

To explore Chinese parents' experiences and expectations of having preterm infants in a Chinese neonatal intensive care unit.

DESIGN AND METHODS

A qualitative descriptive design with semi-structured interviews was used to describe the experiences and expectations of parents of preterm infants in a neonatal intensive care unit in the central region of China. Purposive sampling was adopted to recruit parents (n = 15) of preterm infants and data were collected by face-to-face interviews from January to May 2018. Themes were identified by thematic analysis. This study followed the consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ).

RESULTS

Five themes emerged from the analysis: (1) mixed emotional experiences; (2) separation from the infants; (3) perceived incompetence in taking care of preterm infants; (4) obtained support through various sources; (5) desired more from healthcare professionals.

CONCLUSIONS

Parents experienced additional emotional burdens due to separation from their infants as well as a lack of an effective approach to their associated needs. While NICU staff adopted several strategies to help parents cope with their infant hospitalization, these parents still expected to receive more support from healthcare providers to meet their needs.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

Healthcare providers should be more aware of parents' various needs in neonatal intensive care units and of their important role as constant caregivers. Hospital-based neonatal care should be specifically designed to supply positive support and necessary strategies for parents to strengthen their confidence in parenting infants.

Mutual trust in infant care: the nurses and mothers experiences

The relationship between healthcare providers and parents of infants in neonatal intensive care unit is based on trust and constitutes a core measure of family-centred care and health. The aim of the present qualitative study was to explore mothers and nurses experiences of trust in one another around the caregiving of the hospitalised infant in intensive neonatal care unit. Focused ethnographic research study conducted through observations and in-depth interviews with 20 mothers and 16 nurses in NICU of Tabriz (Iran) in 2017. Two main themes of 'gradual and fragile trust of mother-to-nurse' (subthemes: Primary trust-mistrust, mother's trust to responsible nurse, mother trust Increase with skilful nurse performance, and vulnerability to trust) and 'gradual and fragile trust of nurse-to-mother' (subthemes: Nurse's initial assessment of trust to mother's readiness to participate, Development of trust to mother, and vulnerability of nurse's trust to mother) were obtained. The present study revealed that mutual trust between the nurse and the mother in the care of the infant was a gradual and progressive process that was achieved over time. Complexities around the care of a hospitalised infant influenced how fragile or vulnerable the trust became between nurse and mother. Findings from this research can be used in supporting increased maternal participation in infant care and improvement of family-centred care in the neonatal intensive care unit.

Parents' Perspectives of Closeness and Separation With Their Preterm Infants in the NICU

OBJECTIVE

To discover parents' perceptions of closeness to and separation from their preterm infants in the NICU.

DESIGN

Qualitative descriptive.

SETTING

Urban Level III NICU.

PARTICIPANTS

Twenty parents of preterm infants in the NICU.

METHODS

After ethics approval, data were collected with a smartphone application created for this study. Parents recorded their descriptions of moments of closeness and separation over a 24-hour period in the NICU. Data were transcribed verbatim and content was analyzed.

RESULTS

Five themes related to parents' perceptions of closeness and separation were identified: Having a role as a parent: Feeling autonomous and making decisions; Providing for and getting to know the infant: Feeding, holding, and interacting; Support from staff; Reluctantly leaving the infant's bedside; and NICU environment.

CONCLUSION

Autonomy is a key element of a parent's perception of closeness. Staff in the NICU can facilitate autonomy by involving parents in the care of their preterm infants as much as possible to reinforce the parental role. Parents described leaving their infants' bedsides as very difficult.