Perceptions of Family-Centered Care in a Rural Midwestern NICU

Research Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate caregiver perceptions of care received from neonatal therapists (OT, PT, SLP) in the NICU.

Design: The NICU is a high-risk and specialized practice setting due to the complexity of medical conditions (AOTA, 2018). Neonatal therapists can ensure family-centered care by providing a comprehensive understanding of the infant’s condition, frequent communication, and direct support to enhance parental satisfaction (Baughcum et al., 2020). A mixed-methods, survey design explored the experiences of caregivers whose infants received care in the local rural NICU.

Setting: Setting for this study was a local hospital neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) located in a rural midwestern state in the USA.

Participants: Ten caregivers with infants admitted to the NICU were recruited by NICU neonatal therapists. Six participants provided consent and completed the full survey to be included in this study.

Interventions: The NICU Family-Centered Care Survey, modified with the author's permission from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Caregiver Behavior Checklist (NICU-CBC) – Section 5: Family-Centered Care (A. Carroll et al., 2022) The survey gathered information regarding caregiver perceptions in the NICU. Data collection occurred from October 2023 to February 2024. This electronic survey also used a combination of multiple-choice and text-response questions to gather demographic data. Qualitative data was manually transcribed and recoded for thematic analysis.

Main Outcome Measures: Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and correlational analysis. Spearman Rho correlation analysis was conducted with IBM SPSS Statistics to assess variable relationships. Bonferroni adjustment applied, setting the significance threshold at p < .007 to reduce Type 1 error.

Results: A statistically significant correlation was identified between caregiver satisfaction with neonatal therapists’ promotion of infant-parent bonding and promotion of parent participation in infant care. A positive correlation was found between the progression of parental involvement with the infant’s care in preparation for discharge and encouragement to speak softly to the infant.

Conclusions: In general, caregivers were more satisfied when neonatal therapists utilized family-centered care. Several limitations were identified including small sample size, lack of diversity of caregiver, and lack of consideration for external factors impacting satisfaction. Findings highlighted increased caregiver satisfaction which was influenced by promoting parental involvement and family-centered care during the infant’s stay in the NICU.
Additional studies are needed to assist in generalizability of the findings and continued exploration of interventions to improve caregiver experiences through the lens of family-centered care in the NICU.

Author(s) Disclosures: There are no known conflicts of interest for the listed authors involved.