Abstract
Family involvement is an important part of care for the infant within the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Neonatal nurses recognize the importance of family-centered care (FCC), but need further education in this area to fully implement this practice. The purpose of this project was to investigate the perceptions of nurses regarding the implementation of FCC in the NICU through a descriptive survey. The research study performed was a descriptive non-experimental study using a survey administered to the nursing staff of two NICUs in the upper Midwest United States. The sample size was 30 (16.8%). In the smaller NICU, 23 surveys were distributed and 11 were returned (47.8%) and in the larger NICU 155 surveys were distributed and 19 were returned (12.3%). The measurement tool used was a FCC survey developed by the researchers. The survey was comprised of open-ended questions and question based on a Likert scale of 1-5. The mean experience of sample nurses in the NICU was 1.2 years. The nursing staff believed that FCC is beneficial to the patients (mean 4.6). In addition, the nursing staff believed that more education was necessary on the topic of FCC (mean 4.0). Finally, only 40% of the staff had the ability to write the unit mission statement. FCC is important in the NICU to improve outcomes and parent satisfaction. Four recommendations were discussed in this paper; 1) a unit specific guideline for FCC to reflect their needs and culture; 2) individual unit needs assessments to identify the knowledge base of NICU nurses on FCC; 3) education on the mission statement of the facility with correlation to improved outcomes and patient satisfaction; finally, 4) further studies on unit layout effects on FCC implementation.