Abstract
Objectives:
verify the factors associated with parental stress in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (Neonatal ICU) of small municipalities.
Methods:
cross-sectional quantitative study, with parents of newborns admitted in the neonatal ICU in two philanthropic hospitals. The instruments used were the Parental Stress Scale: Neonatal ICU and Perceptions of Family-Centered Care - Parents. The analysis was performed according to the nature of the distribution of the variables.
Results:
of the 129 volunteers, 79.8% showed parental stress. The averages of stress in the domains “sights and sounds”, “baby looks and behaviors” and “alteration in the mother/father role” was observed, respectively, 1.9, 2.9 and 3.7 in Parental Stress Scale: Neonatal ICU. There was a significant association between the gender of the participants (p=0.0182) and clinical complications during the period of hospitalization (p= 0.0443) with parental stress. A difference was observed in the groups of the variable “hospitalization time to the moment of the data collection” (p= 0.0112), in the domains “respect” (p=0.0266), “collaboration” (p=0.0060) and in the total sum (p= 0.0112) of the Perceptions of Family-Centered Care - Parents scale.
Conclusion:
parental stress was associated with changes in the role of the mother/father; with the mothers and the occurrence of clinical complications with the baby during its hospitalization.
Key words
Neonatal ICU; Newborn; Parenting; Psychological stress; Professional-family relations; Integrative health care
Thumbnail
The horizontal line shows the scores, from the minimum to the maximum marked by the participants, for each domain of the PCCF-P scale and its total sum. The vertical line shows the percentages of the number of answers obtained in each of the scores. The dark gray bars represent the “without stress” group and the light gray bars represent the “with stress” group.