Parent and interdisciplinary professional perceptions of family-centered care in Thai NICU: A qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: Family-centered care (FCC) has been successfully incorporated into daily practice in many neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) worldwide. However, the implementation of FCC in lower-resourced settings, such as Thailand, can be challenging and needs to be further explored. AIMS: To identify parents' and interdisciplinary professionals' perceptions of FCC and to describe the opportunities to improve FCC in a Thai NICU. DESIGN: An exploratory qualitative approach was used. METHODS: The data were collected through face-to-face, semi-structured, individual interviews based on an interview guide. This study was conducted before the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (February 2020) in a hospital in southern Thailand. Inductive thematic analysis was used to analyse interview data. RESULTS: Participants were parents (n = 9) and interdisciplinary professionals (n = 8). The results revealed four key themes: (a) Recognizing and responding to individual families' different readiness and their rights and values, (b) working in a parent-interdisciplinary partnership to provide care, (c) lacking resources and motivation and (d) understanding of care requirements and providing help/sympathy. CONCLUSIONS: The interdisciplinary professionals accepted that FCC is necessary for clinical practice, but there are some challenges in the Thai NICUs context because of the system of health care delivery. The findings highlighted that interdisciplinary professionals often viewed parents' involvement as an obstacle to providing neonatal care. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: Further research is recommended to investigate how FCC is operationalized by interdisciplinary professionals and how hospital administrators can be supported to implement the FCC approach into clinical practice in Thai NICUs.

Weighing distress: decision-making surrounding management of the pregnancy experience among HIV-infected Thai women.

The researchers conducted this grounded theory study in order to describe the decision making surrounding management of the pregnancy experience of 38 pregnant, HIV-infected Thai women. Data were collected using in-depth interviews and an open-ended questionnaire, and they were analyzed using constant comparative analysis. We found that "weighing distress" was the core category of the decision-making process. The supporting categories were being ambivalent about continuing the pregnancy, exploring alternative options, and selecting the appropriate choice. Health care providers should encourage family members to participate and be involved in the women's decision-making processes.

Normalizing: postoperative acute abdominal surgical pain in Thai children.

The purpose of this study was to gain a greater understanding of the postoperative pain experience of Thai children aged 5 to 7 years who had undergone abdominal surgery. A grounded theory approach was used to gain an understanding of the core process. A total of 15 children who had undergone abdominal surgery comprised the study. Data were collected by interviews, observations, and drawing and play interviews. The major task/hypothesis generated in this study was that children were addressing the process of normalizing and that creating an environment that allowed a child to normalize might be expected to greatly contribute to pain reduction.