Objective: To investigate parents' opinions about enrolling their premature baby into several research studies in the few days after birth. Methodology: A questionnaire was given to parents of premature babies in the neonatal intensive care unit who had been invited to join several studies (two to seven). Results: All 50 mothers and 42 of 48 fathers completed the questionnaire independently; 28% had been asked to join two studies, 32% three, 24% four, 14% five, and 2% six studies. There were 61 babies with mean (SD) gestational age 26.9 (1.6) weeks and birth weight 877 (249) g. Nearly three quarters (71%) of the parents thought it was very good for their baby to be in a hospital that was carrying out a lot of research. Most (93%) thought that their baby would get the same or better care in a study. Only 15% thought their baby was too small for research studies. Almost all (98%) wanted to be involved in the decision about their baby joining a study. Only 22% were worried about the number of studies; 10% would not enrol their baby in any studies, but 74% were willing for their baby to join two or more studies, and 10% would enrol in all the studies. Most (94%) believed that their baby's participation would improve care of future babies. Conclusions: Most of these parents were willing to join several studies. The majority were not worried about their baby participating in the studies. The profession needs to be aware that parents are supportive of neonatal research and participation in multiple studies.
This project is a controlled prospective longitudinal study of stress experiences of parents with premature infants born from 30-35 weeks gestation being cared for in a tertiary special care nursery (SCN). Sixty mothers and 59 fathers of premature infants and 60 mothers and fathers of term infants were recruited into the study. A range of repeated selfreports and biochemical markers of stress (cortisol and tribulin) were carried out on 5 measuring times through approximately a total of 24 weeks for parents of premature infants and 17 weeks for parents of term infants.Parents of premature infants reported higher stress levels than parents of term infants within the first week of infant's birth but had lower biochemical markers of stress. The stressors perceived by these parents in a SCN were appearance and behaviour of the infants and the delayed in performing the parental role. Parents used both emotion-and problemfocused coping strategies to deal with the stressful events.A follow-up telephone interview of these parents a year after the birth of their premature infant found that most parents expressed the experience as positive. A few parents were concerned over the neurodevelopmental and cognitive outcomes of their infants. Implications for clinical practice were discussed.
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