Association Between the Support of NICU Team and Subjective Health of Parents

Preterm birth is a traumatic event for parents. They cope with threatening and unfamiliar environment of hospital, losing the parental role, and frustration. The NICU team is the main support source for these parents. Support and providing information are most important for parents, as they can have some control, involvement and self confidence during the hospitalization, and also feel healthier. The hypothesis of this study is that better support to parents lead to better subjective health feeling by them.

The study will be held among mothers to infants in NICU who are at least 7 days old. The study will use a questionaire to assess the subjective health feeling and the estimation of the support from the team. Sample size is about 150 mothers.