Comprehensive and Innovative Clinical Tools for Nurses and Parents to Help Promote Family and Sibling Adaptation in the NICU.

Family-centered care (FCC) in NICUs aims to support parents and children facing the distressing experience of a preterm infant's NICU hospitalization. Neonatal nurses must also have proper knowledge of the support interventions for parents' and siblings' adaptation during the NICU hospitalization. This paper describes comprehensive and innovative clinical tools which consist of a clinical reference guide for nurses, a website for parents, and a storybook for siblings to promote families' adaptation, and help parents support their older children during NICU hospitalization. Based on scientific evidence and the family systems nursing approach, these comprehensive and innovative clinical tools for nurses, parents, and siblings contribute, through their development and implementation, to enhancing FCC and the quality of nursing care to families.

Promoting Family and Siblings' Adaptation Following a Preterm Birth: A Quality Improvement Project of a Family-Centered Care Nursing Educational Intervention.

BACKGROUND AND PROBLEM: A Family-Centered Care (FCC) quality improvement project was implemented with nurses to promote families' and siblings' adaptation during the NICU hospitalization of a preterm infant. The objective of this quality improvement project was to compare the nurses' knowledge and perceptions as well as their implementation of nursing practices to facilitate the families' and siblings' adaptation during NICU hospitalization before and after they received the FCC educational intervention. METHODS AND INTERVENTION: A pre- and post-intervention evaluation design was used in this quality improvement project. A convenience sample of 20 nurses was initially recruited and completed the pre-intervention, while 13 completed the post-intervention. The educational intervention included a reflective practice exercise and a face-to-face training session. Nurses completed a self-administered questionnaire with two subscales assessing their knowledge, perceptions, as well as their implementation of nursing practices related to family and sibling adaptation in the NICU. RESULTS: The paired samples t-test shows Paired-samples t-test showed that the nurses' knowledge, perceptions and implementation of nursing practices were more favorable following the FCC educational intervention. CONCLUSIONS: Findings of this quality improvement project reinforce the value of supporting NICU nurses with educational training programs to enhance their practice. This educational intervention represents an effort to foster the implementation of FCC in NICUs.