Mother-infant relationships on a neonatal intensive care unit
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Exploring mothers’ experiences and needs when building relationships with their children on a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU)
IRAS ID
126211
Contact name
Emma Tyerman
Contact email
Research summary
This research aims to explore mothers’ experiences of building a relationship with their infant while on a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and after discharge. In particular the research aims to focus on exploring mothers’ perceptions about what supported them in building parent-child relationships on the ward and after discharge as well as what made this more difficult with a view to understand what role clinical psychology may have in supporting care practices around this.
Families that have been through NICU are at a higher risk of having difficulties within the relationships between parents and child(e.g. Leifer et al. 1974; Udry-Jorgensen et al. 2011). The impact that these difficulties can have on later life can be significant (Bowlby, 1988), therefore it is important to support these families early on in the relationships in order to foster parent-infant relationships.
This is a qualitative study using face to face semi-structured interviews of about 4-12 mothers. It is recognised that the experiences of mothers and fathers can be different (Gregran, Helseth & Fagermoen, 2008). Therefore, only mothers will be asked to participate due to the requirements for similarity of the participants by the the type of analysis (Interpretative Phenomonological Analysis-IPA). The infants will have spent more than one week in the NICU in the specified hospital wihtout serious ongoing health condition. All mothers that meet these criteria, within the data collection period will be offered the project information and asked to make contact if they were interested. The mothers will be interviewed for approximately 45 minutes to an hour, in a location convenient to them. IPA will to be used to analyse the data due to its focus on the experience of an individual of a signficant life event. The general findings will be fed back to participants on completion if wanted.
REC name
North West - Preston Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
13/NW/0631
Date of REC Opinion
17 Sep 2013
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion