Parenting in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit: A Qualitative Study.
Gizem Kerimoglu Yildiz, Selda Ates Besirik
PMID 40295222WHAT IT FOUND
Parents in the NICU felt safe trusting staff but feared harming their fragile infants, especially during kangaroo care.
Discharge readiness depended on gestational age, not just clinical stability. Mothers needed hands-on training for tasks like bathing; fathers often felt like observers until they took direct care.
Key findings
01Trust in the medical team helped parents cope with the unfamiliar NICU environment, with some describing incubators as protective 'cocoons'.
02Parents experienced intense anxiety about harming their fragile infants, particularly when performing kangaroo care or handling tubes.
03Discharge readiness was linked to gestational age; parents of very preterm infants felt unprepared even when babies were clinically stable, citing fear of not reacting to emergencies.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The study was conducted in a single secondary-level NICU in Turkey, which may limit the transferability of findings to other healthcare systems or cultures. Mothers and fathers were interviewed together, which the authors acknowledge as a limitation because it may have prevented individual perspectives from emerging fully or influenced what each parent shared. The sample size was small (15 pairs), and the open-bay NICU design lacked private spaces, which specifically shaped the parents' complaints about bonding and privacy. The study did not measure outcomes like parental stress levels or infant development, so it cannot determine if these experiences lead to long-term issues.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret these themes as evidence that specific interventions, such as kangaroo care or discharge education programs, reduce parental anxiety or improve outcomes. This is a descriptive study of what parents said they felt and needed; it did not test any treatment or measure changes in stress or readiness scores.