Background & Objectives
Little is known about how parents think about neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) safety. Due to their physiologic immaturity and small size, infants in NICUs are especially vulnerable to injury from their medical care. Campaigns are underway to integrate patients and family members into patient safety. This study aimed to describe how parents of infants in the NICU conceptualize patient safety and what kinds of concerns they have about safety.
Methods
This mixed-methods study employed questionnaires, interviews, and observation with parents of infant patients in an academic medical centre NICU. Measures included parent stress, family-centredness, and types of safety concerns.
Results
46 parents completed questionnaires and 14 of these parents also participated in 10 interviews (including 4 couple interviews). Infants had a range of medical and surgical problems, including prematurity, congenital diaphragmatic hernia, and congenital cardiac disease. Parents were positive about their infants’ care and had low levels of concern about the safety of procedures. Parents reporting more stress had more concerns. We identified three overlapping domains in parent’s conceptualizations of safety in the NICU, including physical, developmental, and emotional safety. Parents demonstrated sophisticated understanding of how environmental, treatment, and personnel factors could potentially influence their infants’ developmental and emotional health.
Conclusions
Parents have safety concerns that cannot be addressed solely by reducing errors in the NICU. Parent engagement strategies that respect parents as partners in safety and address how clinical treatment articulates with physical, developmental, and emotional safety domains may result in safety improvements.
OBJECTIVE: Researchers examined associations between Index for Professional Nursing Governance (IPNG) types and outcomes. BACKGROUND: Effects of professional nursing governance on nurse-related outcomes by Magnet ® status are not well studied. METHODS: Associations were evaluated between average IPNG scores from 2170 RNs, and nursesensitive indicators (NSIs) as well as patient and RN satisfaction outcomes (N = 205 study units; 20 hospitals), following Magnet requirements. RESULTS: Magnet hospitals had significantly better IPNG shared governance scores than non-Magnet hospitals (Magnet, 106.7; 101.3). For
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