Medical technologies, although often crucial for the provision of healthcare, may carry unintended significance for patients and their families. The highly technicised neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is the place where parents of hospitalised baby have their early encounters with their child. The aim of this study is to investigate phenomenologically how the contact and relation between par...

BACKGROUND Family-Centred Care (FCC) is recognized as an important component of all paediatric care, including neonatal care, although practical clinical guidelines to support this care model are still needed in Italy. The characteristics and services for families in Italian NICUs show a lack of organization and participation. METHODS The first aim was to compare satisfaction and stress level...

Medical care of infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is so complex that professionals have been almost exclusively responsible for providing care to the infants and information to their families. Although federal law now mandates early intervention programs and service providers to include families in decision making and treatment implementation for their children, family-centered...

Background. With increasing sophistication and technology, survival rates hugely improved among preterm infants admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit. Nutrition and feeding remain a challenge and preterm infants are at high risk of encountering oral feeding difficulties. Objective. To determine what facts may impact on oral feeding readiness and competence and which kind of interventions...

AIM This paper is a report of a study to identify how nurse clinicians learn with and from each other in the workplace. BACKGROUND Clinicians' everyday practices and interactions with each other have recently been targeted as areas of research, because it is there that quality of care and patient safety are achieved. Orientation of new nurses and doctors into a specialty unit often results in...

BACKGROUND The infants, hospitalized in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), engage with problems from admission to discharge, exploring of which ensures their safe transition. The purpose of this study was to identify the factors that influence infant's transition from the NICU to home. MATERIALS AND METHODS A qualitative study was used for identifying the factors that affect infant's tr...

Around 20% of very low birthweight infants admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit become hypotensive within 24 hours of their admission. Standard treatment is either expansion of the circulating volume by the infusion of plasma protein fraction or by using dopamine to improve cardiac function. The purpose of this study was to investigate by a randomised controlled trial which was the most a...

A comprehensive assessment of feeding performance of infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) includes not only the traditional approaches of evaluating oral motor control and sensory responses but also evaluation of other factors. Infant feeding is a highly complex and integrated process involving numerous body systems. A global assessment would determine the infant's feeding functio...

Descriptive statistics for the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Network Neurobehavioral Scale summary scores are provided based on data from 1388 1-month-old infants in the Maternal Lifestyle Study (MLS) of prenatal drug exposure and child outcome. The multisite MLS is described, followed by tables with descriptive statistics and percentile for the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Network Neurobehavior...

BACKGROUND With the development of neonatal intensive care units (NICUs), new issues have emerged for physicians working in this area, including the ethical aspects of providing invasive and advanced care to neonates with extremely poor prognosis. This research was undertaken with the aim of investing the factors affecting physicians' practice in management of newborns in such complicated circu...