Multidimensional Assessment of Infant, Parent and Staff Outcomes During a Family Centered Care Enhancement Project in a Tertiary Neonatal Intensive Care

Background: The therapeutic advances and progress in the care for preterm infants have enabled the regular survival of more and more immature infants. However, the high burden of lifelong sequelae following premature delivery constitutes an ongoing challenge and psychomotor disorders and neurobehavioral difficulties persist into adulthood. Regardless of premature delivery, parental mental health and a healthy parent-child relationship were identified as essential prerogatives for normal infant development. Family centered care (FCC) supports preterm infants and their families by respecting the particular developmental, social and emotional needs in the NICU. Due to the large variations in concepts and goals of different FCC initiatives, scientific data on the benefits of FCC for the infant and family outcome are sparse and its effects on the clinical team need to be elaborated.

Methods: This prospective longitudinal single-center cohort study will enroll preterm infants with a gestational length of ≤32+0 weeks and/or a birth weight of ≤1500 g and their parents. After a baseline period, additional FCC elements will be introduced gradually every 6 months, covering staff training, parent education, psychosocial support for families, and last but not least, the neonatal intensive care unit environment. Recruitment will occur over a 5.5-year period, and outcomes will be tracked through periodic follow-up until 24 month of corrected age. Sample size calculation is based on corrected gestational age at discharge as the primary outcome. Secondary outcomes in infants include morbidities and treatment aspects of prematurity such as somatic growth, duration of ventilatory support, and psychomotor development. Parental outcomes relate to success of parenting education and skills, parent-family interaction, parental satisfaction, and mental health with particular emphasis on anxiety, depression, and stress. Staffing issues are addressed with special attention to the job satisfaction item. Quality improvement steps are monitored using the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle method, and outcome measures address the child, parent, and medical team as they are inextricably linked. Parallel data collection allows for the interrelationship between these three important research areas to be examined.

Discussion: It is scientifically impossible to allocate improvements in outcome measures to individual enhancement steps of FCC that constitutes a continuous change in NICU culture and attitudes covering diverse areas of change. Therefore, our trial is designed to allocate childhood, parental and staff outcome measures during the stepwise changes introduced by a FCC intervention program. But even if no positive outcome measures can be confirmed, the successful execution of our standardized statistical process control method approach is suited to guide quality improvement in future studies in neonatology and beyond.