Parent and staff perspectives on the benefits and barriers to communication with infants in the neonatal intensive care unit.
Rachel Romeo, Regina Pezanowski, Kassie Merrill and 2 others
PMID 35232268WHAT IT FOUND
NICU staff and families saw talking, singing, reading, and touch as important for infants, but incubators, time pressure, noise, and fear limited them.
Nurses thought parents communicated less than parents said they did.
Key findings
01Staff and family members described talking, reading, singing, touch, looking, and phone use as ways to communicate with NICU infants.
02They saw communication as important for bonding, calming, and development, but few could explain how or why.
03Illness acuity and lack of time were major barriers, and staff and family members differed on parental communication frequency and whether phones helped or hindered.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPsWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The study was done in one 24-bed, open-bay quaternary NICU, so it may not match a smaller, quieter, or single-family-room unit. Patients were likely very sick, so staff and families may have seen more barriers than in units with healthier preterm babies. Bedside nurses were overrepresented among staff, so non-nurse perspectives were limited. Families needed English proficiency, so the sample did not include non-English-speaking families. The study asked what people thought and did; it did not measure infant language or neurodevelopment outcomes. The sample reached saturation after 40 interviews, so it cannot show how common these views are.
Declared interests
No conflicts of interest are stated in the supplied text; the publication types list NIH extramural research support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as proof that talking, singing, or reading improves infant outcomes. It reports staff and family perspectives, not tested interventions or measured effects.