Supporting Parents in the NICU: Guidelines for Promoting Parent Confidence and Competence

Abstract

AS INTENSIVE CARE NURSERIES move toward implementation of family-centered and developmentally supportive care practices, we are encouraged to focus on the relationship between parents and their infants and recognize the essential role that parents play in promoting the health and recovery of their infant. Supporting parents and facilitating a closer, more intimate relationship with their fragile, sick newborn is often a challenge. Yet these first weeks and months can lay a foundation either of positive feelings or of ambivalence and negativity, which can have consequences for the future stability of the attachment relationship so important to the infant’s development.