the effect of parents empowerment program on their beliefs about parental role, behaviors and characteristics of their premature infants in nicu

the effect of parents empowerment program on their beliefs about parental role, behaviors and characteristics of their premature infants in nicu    khajeh m [1] *, karimi r [2] , sadat hosseini as [3]     received: 14 apr , 2013 accepted: 20 jun , 2013  abstract  background & aims : about 10 percents of infants are born prematurely and their hospitalization is avoidable in many cases. this event can represent a considerable source of stress for parents. as well as many parents haven’t enough knowledge about premature infants and their own parenting roles in nicu and this new situation. these problems can disrupt the expected development of interactive skills for both parent and infant. nurses are persons, which can prevent of these problems with planning and implementing family centered cares.  objective: our goal was to study the effects of premature infant&apos;s parent empowerment program in nicu, as a family centered intervention, on their beliefs about parental role and what behaviors and characteristics to expect of their premature infants in nicu.  materials & methods : a quasi-experimental, posttest-only design with a comparison group was conducted with 65 families with preterm infants from 2010 to 2011 in nicus in two hospitals of tehran university of medical science. all mothers and fathers were above 18 years of age and whose infants born at the study sites, below 37 weeks of gestational age. parents in experiment group received information and behavioral activities about the appearance and behavioral characteristics of preterm infants and how best to parent them via verbal face to face education, audio taped in cd or bluetooth and written materials. in order to measure the parent’s beliefs about parental role and what behaviors and characteristics to expect of their premature infants in nicu, the 15-item pbs: nicu questionnaire was used. results: mothers in the empowerment program group reported significantly higher beliefs about their parental role and what behaviors and characteristics to expect of their infants during hospitalization (m: 23.27±5.09) compared with control mothers (m: 19.23±4.99) (p<0.001) , as well as, fathers in the empowerment program group reported significantly higher beliefs (m: 24±4.34) compared with control fathers (m: 17.2±4.66) (p<0.001) . conclusion: probably, parent’s empowerment program can improve their beliefs about parental role and what behaviors and characteristics to expect of their infants in nicu. key words: family nursing parent empowerment program infants, premature intensive care units, neonatal    address: nursing and midwifery school of shahroud university of medical sciences, 7th tir square, shahroud, semnan, ir iran .   tel: (+98) 02733395054, fax: 02733341283.   email: [email protected]   [1] faculty member of nursing and midwifery school of shahroud university of medical sciences, shahroud, semnan, iran. (corresponding author)   [2] faculty member of nursing and midwifery school of tehran university of medical sciences, tehran, iran.  [3] faculty member of nursing and midwifery school of tehran university of medical sciences, tehran, iran.