Research and studiesTeaching Mothers About Their Preterm Infants
Section snippets
Physical and Behavioral Characteristics of Premature Infants
The unique physical and behavioral characteristics of premature infants may inhibit the development of positive parent–infant relationships. Parents of premature infants have described the newborn’s physical appearance (large head, thin extremities, small size, and transparent skin) as bother-some.8., 9. Parents have described their premature infant as looking like a frog, chicken, rat, baby gorilla, and skinned monkey.10., 11.
Johnson and Grubbs hypothesized that the preterm infant’s immature
METHODS
The two hypotheses tested in this study were that mothers of preterm infants who received instruction about unique physical and behavioral characteristics of premature infants would 1) demonstrate more positive perceptions of their infants and 2) demonstrate more positive maternal behaviors than would mothers who did not receive such instruction.
RESULTS
A 0.05 level of significance was used to test the two hypotheses. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) procedures were used to test whether mothers who received instruction would demonstrate more positive perceptions of their premature infants than mothers who did not receive such instruction. No significant differences appeared among the three groups on the NPI 2 Scores (F[2, 27] = 1.5, P = 0.24). Eight mothers had negative perceptions of their infants on the NPI 1, but only four had negative
DISCUSSION
The short-term teaching program about characteristics of preterm infants did not significantly affect the perceptions or behaviors of mothers of premature infants. Several possible explanations exist for the failure to support the study hypotheses.
Intensive care nursery nurses currently may be providing optimum levels of parental support, making additional hospital-based interventions unnecessary. This possibility is supported by the findings of Brown et al and Klaus and Kennell, described
IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING
Experimental studies such as this one are essential in identifying effective and ineffective nursing interventions. Ineffective intervention strategies may not harm the clients they are intended to serve but may impose unnecessary time and money costs to the providers and consumers of the services. Some untested interventions commonly used by nurses in a variety of settings may have unforeseen adverse effects on the consumers. Teaching intervention programs are often implemented by nurses
CONCLUSIONS
Although no adverse effects of the intervention evaluated in this study were identified, the study findings suggest that providing parents with structured teaching about the characteristics of their premature infants does not significantly enhance the support currently provided by individual intensive care nursery nurses. Additional experimental research is needed to determine whether other short-term interventions are effective in promoting positive parent–infant relationships or whether a
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to acknowledge that the research was funded by a National Research Service Award through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Division of Nursing, grant no. NU05480-01.
Lynda Law Harrison is an associate professor at the University of Alabama, Capstone College of Nursing, University, Alabama.
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A review of nursing interventions to foster becoming a mother
2006, JOGNN - Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, and Neonatal NursingCitation Excerpt :However, there was no increase in the intervention groups’ maternal confidence (Golas & Parks; Poley‐Strobel & Beckmann), competence (Flagler, 1988), or ease of transition to the maternal role (Brouse, 1988) scores. Nurse demonstration of infant behavior and the mother’s programmatic stimulation of her infant were more effective than information alone (Harrison & Twardosz, 1986) or other contrast conditions (Anderson, 1981; Golas & Parks, 1986; White‐Traut & Nelson, 1988). For example, mothers of preterm infants who had greater maternal involvement in interactional focused maternal‐infant stimulation had greater sensitivity to their infants’ cues and greater use of cognitive growth fostering care (White‐Traut & Nelson).
Clinical Specialist Pre‐ and Postdischarge Teaching of Parents of Very Low Birth Weight Infants
1989, Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, & Neonatal NursingApplying research in practice: Parenting the premature infant
1989, Applied Nursing ResearchDoes home visiting improve parenting and the quality of the home environment? A systematic review and meta analysis
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Lynda Law Harrison is an associate professor at the University of Alabama, Capstone College of Nursing, University, Alabama.
Sandra Twardosz is an associate professor in the Department of Child and Family Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.