Impact Assessment of a Psychoeducational Intervention in Quality of Life of Parents With Children With Congenital Heart Defects

Congenital heart defects (CHD) are the most common congenital malformations. Despite the progress made in the last decades in diagnosis and treatment, CHD continues to be associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Several studies have shown a reduction in the quality of life (QoL) of parents of children with CHD, which may affect children too. The main research aim is to assess and to understand the impact of a psychoeducational intervention in QoL of parents with newborns with CHD.

We are including parents of inpatient newborns in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of UAG da Mulher e Criança - Centro Hospitalar Universitário de São João (CHUSJ) with the diagnosis of non-syndromic CHD, between March 2019 and February 2020. We also included parents of newborns born at CHUSJ with the diagnosis of non-syndromic CHD, not admited in NICU, between September 2019 and February 2020. The inclusion criteria are: I) parents of newborns (up to 28 days) with the diagnosis of non- syndromic CHD; II) newborns hospitalized in CHUSJ; III) parents aged ≥ 18 years. Parents of newborns with other important co-morbidities associated with CHD and those who do not have good understanding and expression in Portuguese will be excluded.

Parents will be divided in 2 study groups: INTERVENTION group (I) and CONTROL group (C). Group I will receive a psychoeducational intervention in addition to the usual routines of the Service. Group C will receive the usual routines of the Service. The psychoeducational intervention, which consists of 2 sessions lasting 90 minutes each one, will be performed as soon as possible after inclusion in the study. Participants will be evaluated in three moments: M1 beginning of the study; M2 4 weeks after the intervention (I) or after enrollment (C) and M3 16 weeks after intervention/enrollment. The primary outcome will be parental QoL, which will be evaluated through the World Health Organization Quality of Life-Bref (WHOQOL-Bref). The family impact and the perception of positive contributions will be secondary outcomes. These outcome variables will be assessed by the Impact on Family Scale and the Positive Contributions Scale - Kansas Inventory of Parental Perceptions, respectively. A semi-structured interview will be performed after all quantitative data have been collected.

The authors expect to find an increase of QoL and positive contributions and a decrease of family impact in the intervention group comparatively to the control group.