Viewpoint of Mothers of Premature Newborns about Nursing Supports in Neonatal Intensive Care Units

Introduction: Prematurity is the leading cause of mortality in newborns without congenital anomalies worldwide. A premature newborn has a devastating effect on parents'roles, especially the mothers’, and creates sentimental and vague feelings for mothers. Although advances in technology and high levels of nursing care provide mothers with adequate support and relative independence in child care, it is practically difficult to terminate nursing care and leave it to the mothers. Objective: The present study aimed to determine the viewpoints of mothers of premature newborns about the importance and amount of the support received from nurses. Materials and Methods:This cross-sectional study was conducted with a gradual approach over three months on 160 mothers of premature newborns with a history of hospitalization for at least 24 hours in NICUs of Rasht educational-medical centers in 2014.Data collection tool was a mother/child demographic questionnaire and the 21-item Nurse-Parent Support Tool. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (Spearman’s correlation coefficient). Results: The results showed that the highest and lowest amounts of support received by mothers were in the care giving support (69.87±3.0) and parental esteem (96.85±2.0), respectively. Also, according to the mothers, care giving support (39.7±4.0) was the most and emotional support (75.0±3.99) was the least important domain. The results revealed a significant relationship and inverse correlation between the mean score of giving and receiving parental esteem (r = -0.184, p = 0.02) and the mean total score of giving and receiving support from the viewpoint of mothers and nurses (r = -0.183, p = 0.012). Conclusion: Mothers would like to have the highest amount of support in providing the best care for their newborns. Mothers’ most dissatisfaction was with the supportive communication and parental esteem domains which were important for mothers but received little attention from nurses. Therefore, these domains should be addressed and ways should be introduced for their provision in family-centered care.