Fathers' Stress in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

The analysed sample was much smaller than planned: 109 fathers (55 control, 54 intervention) were analysed after low questionnaire return, although 253 and 344 fathers were enrolled. The design was quasiexperimental, comparing different time periods, so differences could reflect other changes. The intervention was a package of 8 activities, so the contribution of any single activity cannot be separated. The paper did not measure how fully the father-friendly activities were implemented or accepted in practice. Fathers of critically ill infants, infants transferred to university hospital, and infants admitted from home were excluded, so results may not apply to more severely ill NICU cases. Many fathers missed more than 60% of items in a subscale and were withdrawn from analysis. Some baseline differences existed between groups, such as employment and monitoring status.

Do not read this as showing that a father-friendly NICU lowers paternal stress. Fathers in the intervention group had higher stress scores and a smaller decrease from admission to discharge than the earlier control group, although they had more skin-to-skin contact.