The purpose of this study was to identify parents' self-reported stressors as they experience their baby's course in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Miles, Funk & Carlson (1993) Parental Stressor Scale: Neonatal Intensive Care Unit was used to survey 119 parents of neonatal infants, born at 24 weeks to full term, in the 28-bed level 3 NICU of a mid-Atlantic, Magnet-designated acute car...

For parents, the experience of having an infant in the NICU is often psychologically traumatic. No parent can be fully prepared for the extreme stress and range of emotions of caring for a critically ill newborn. As health care providers familiar with the NICU, we thought that we understood the impact of the NICU on parents. But we were not prepared to see the children in our own families as NI...

BACKGROUND Hospital-acquired infections are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in neonatal intensive care units (NICU). The aim of the study was to investigate the change of nosocomial infection rate in a NICU during a 4-year surveillance period. METHODS We investigated the changes in nosocomial infection rates, infection sites, and microorganism species in a NICU before and after the...

PURPOSE The purpose of this case report was to determine how current physical therapy (PT) practice in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), with 1 infant, adhered to the neonatal PT decision-making framework that was developed as part of the NICU practice guidelines for clinical care. SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS Most PT interventions implemented in this NICU were supported by the algorithm, wit...

The relationship between maternal mental health and infant development has been established in the literature. The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) is a particularly challenging environment for new mothers as several natural processes are disrupted. The objective of this study is to elucidate protective factors and environmental deficits associated with the NICU. The experiences of forty-six...

OBJECTIVES 1) To describe the use of occupational therapy (OT), physical therapy (PT) and speech-language pathology (SLP) services in a level IV neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), 2) to describe predictors of early therapy usage, and 3) to test the hypothesis that more NICU-based therapy will relate to better neurobehavioral outcomes. METHODS Seventy-nine infants born ≤32 weeks gestation ha...

BACKGROUND Coagulase-negative staphylococci, mainly Staphylococcus epidermidis, are the most frequent cause of late-onset sepsis (LOS) in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) setting. However, recent reports indicate that methicillin-resistant, vancomycin-heteroresistant Staphylococcus capitis could emerge as a significant pathogen in the NICU. We investigated the prevalence, clonality and v...

National statistics show that infants have the highest child maltreatment victimization and fatality rate compared to all other age groups. NICU infants are represented in both the unique victim and fatality groups. Mothers are identified as the highest reported child maltreatment perpetrator group based on national statistics. NICU infants are at significant risk for maltreatment because the N...

As the most common complication of childbirth affecting 10%-15% of women, postpartum depression (PPD) goes vastly undetected and untreated, inflicting long-term consequences on both mother and child. Studies consistently show that mothers of infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) experience PPD at higher rates with more elevated symptomatology than mothers of healthy infants. Althou...

The short-term survival rate for the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for the period 1990–1995 was 80.8%. The attrition rate of NICU survivors prior to registration was higher than for the control population. The number of registered NICU survivors with more than one race start was less than the control population. Fifty-nine percent of thoroughbred and 44% of the standardbred foals that wer...