Parental Participation in Preterm Infant Feeding in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
Marliese Dion Nist, Audrey Robinson, Rita H Pickler
PMID 36472494WHAT IT FOUND
Parents participated in a mean of 6.7% of gavage feedings and 18.6% of oral feedings.
More oral participation was linked to less than one day shorter hospitalization per 1% increase in participation, but this was not clinically significant.
Key findings
01Parents participated in a mean of 6.7% of gavage feedings and a mean of 18.6% of oral feedings.
02After adjusting for multiple comparisons, only insurance type remained associated with parental participation in gavage feeding, and only maternal race remained associated with parental participation in oral feeding.
03Parental participation in oral feeding was associated with lower alerting/orienting scores at NICU discharge, and a 1% increase in participation was associated with less than one day shorter hospitalization, but this was not clinically significant.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
This was a secondary analysis, so it used only data already collected and did not measure all factors that may affect parental participation. The analysis did not separate mothers from fathers or other caregivers, so it cannot show which parent participated. The sample was small, and the authors did not control for potential confounders. Some infants enrolled in the trial were excluded because they came from the second NICU, transferred before outcome data were collected, died, or had a late diagnosis affecting neurologic outcomes. Infants assigned to standard care could still receive hand containment or holding because it would be unethical to prohibit nurses or parents from holding infants, so the groups were not completely separate. The feeding time differences were very small, less than one day per 1% increase, and were not clinically significant. The negative association with alerting/orienting may be a chance finding, because no other associations with neurobehavior scores were seen.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The supplied text does not state who funded the work.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that increasing parental participation will improve infant neurobehavior or shorten the NICU stay. The study found only small associations, and the time to discharge differences were not clinically significant.