A Father-friendly Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Kolding Sygehus

Status: Completed

Conditions: Self Efficacy; Perception, Self; Stress

Treatments: Behavioral: The father-friendly NICU

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05521620

19/20297

Details and patient eligibility

About

An early parent-child relationship is important for a child's development, both intellectually and socially. The admission of premature or ill newborns to neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) may make the establishment of the parent-child relationship challenging due to parents' anxiety and despair.

Traditionally, most healthcare professionals have mainly focused on infants and mothers, even though fathers often feel stressed, powerless, and helpless, and find it difficult to establish a father-child relationship. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of a father-friendly NICU on infants, parents and staff.

Full description

An early parent-child relationship is important for a child's development, both intellectually and socially. The admission of premature or ill newborns to neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) may make the establishment of the parent-child relationship challenging due to parents' anxiety and despair.

Traditionally, most healthcare professionals have mainly focused on infants and mothers, even though fathers often feel stressed, powerless, and helpless, and find it difficult to establish a father-child relationship. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of a father-friendly NICU on infants, parents and staff.

The study was conducted in 3 steps

1. A baseline measurement
2. Development and implementation of the intervention a father friendly NICU
3. After measurement

Different questionnaires were used:

• The Parental Stressor Scale: Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (PSS:NICU)
• The Nurse Parent Support Tool (NPST)
• A questionnaire intended to measure nurses self-efficacy (SE).

The study was approved by the Danish Data Protection Agency (No 19/20297) and the procedures were in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration. In accordance with the Danish law, this study did not need to be reviewed by an ethics committee.

Enrollment: 500 patients

Sex: All

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• fathers/mothers with infants admitted to the NICU were eligible
• nurses who work in Danish NICUs

Exclusion criteria

• fathers/mothers who did not understand verbal and written Danish
• fathers/mothers of critically ill newborn infants
• fathers of newborn infants whose mother was critically ill
• fathers/mothers of newborn infants admitted to the NICU from home.
• nurses without patient-contact, on maternity- or long-term sickness-leave

Trial design

Primary purpose: Supportive Care

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Sequential Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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500 participants in 2 patient groups

Father-friendly NICU

Active Comparator group

Description:

* Fathers have skin-to-skin contact with their infants * Fathers participate in important situations * Fathers receive information and guidance directly * Both parents participate in meaningful conversations * The department organize mother and father groups * The families have the opportunity to have a close family member to support them * Older siblings have the opportunity to stay overnight. * The department offer counseling by a social worker

Treatment:

Behavioral: The father-friendly NICU

No Father-friendly NICU (baseline)

No Intervention group

Description:

Baseline - before implementation of the intervention