Helping NICU parents face the future

Abstract

One of the biggest questions weighing on NICU parents' minds is what the future will bring, and a sense of optimism about the future is important to enduring a lengthy hospitalization. Will their child be healthy with good quality of life? Will their child be happy with a circle of friends? Neonatologists and NICU providers spend a great deal of time supporting and counseling families as they wrestle with these important questions. We clinicians tend to focus on the medical condition of the infant to predict long-term physical and neurodevelopmental outcomes. However, parents base their projections for their child's future on more than the medical facts. In this volume of The Journal, Ferrand et al report that parental resilience (as measured by a validated 13-item questionnaire) was a key factor in their envisioning good quality of life after the NICU, and that less resilient parents were 10 times more likely to predict that their newborn would remain chronically ill. Parental resilience was not diminished by the stress of the hospitalization itself but was affected by external risk factors such as lower education and socioeconomic levels. The good news is that 75% of parents had good resilience as measured by this scale. However, these findings should lead to increased awareness and support of those parents with lower resilience. Resilience is at the heart of optimism, so investing in those at-risk families could help pave the way to more parental engagement and an easier transition to home. Article page 64 ▶ Resilience Rather than Medical Factors: How Parents Predict Quality of Life of Their Sick NewbornThe Journal of PediatricsVol. 200PreviewTo assess the influence of resiliency and stress on parental perspectives of the future quality of life (QOL) of neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) newborns at high risk of neurodevelopmental disability. Full-Text PDF