THE EFFECT OF PARENTS EMPOWERMENT PROGRAM ON THEIR BELIEFS ABOUT PARENTAL ROLE, BEHAVIORS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THEIR PREMATURE INFANTS IN NICU

About 10 percents of infants are born prematurely and their hospitalization is
avoidable in many cases. This event can represent a considerable source of stress for parents. As well
as many parents haven’t enough knowledge about premature infants and their own parenting roles in
NICU and this new situation. These problems can disrupt the expected development of interactive
skills for both parent and infant. Nurses are persons, which can prevent of these problems with
planning and implementing family centered cares.
Objective: Our goal was to study the effects of premature infant's parent empowerment program in
NICU, as a family centered intervention, on their beliefs about parental role and what behaviors and
characteristics to expect of their premature infants in NICU.
Materials & Methods: A quasi-experimental, posttest-only design with a comparison group was
conducted with 65 families with preterm infants from 2010 to 2011 in NICUs in two Hospitals of
Tehran University of Medical Science. All mothers and fathers were above 18 years of age and whose
infants born at the study sites, below 37 weeks of gestational age. Parents in experiment group
received information and behavioral activities about the appearance and behavioral characteristics of
preterm infants and how best to parent them via verbal face to face education, audio taped in CD or
Bluetooth and written materials. In order to measure the parent’s beliefs about parental role and what
behaviors and characteristics to expect of their premature infants in NICU, the 15-item PBS: NICU
questionnaire was used.
Results: Mothers in the empowerment program group reported significantly higher beliefs about their
parental role and what behaviors and characteristics to expect of their infants during hospitalization
(M: 23.27±5.09) compared with control mothers (M: 19.23±4.99) (p<0.001), as well as, fathers in the
empowerment program group reported significantly higher beliefs (M: 24±4.34) compared with
control fathers (M: 17.2±4.66) (p<0.001).
Conclusion: Probably, parent’s empowerment program can improve their beliefs about parental role
and what behaviors and characteristics to expect of their infants in NICU.