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‘The story behind NICU reading programs’

Journal of Perinatology volume 36, pages 930–931 (2016)Cite this article

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‘Serenity’s’ mother walked into the unit at exactly 13:15 hours. The same time as yesterday. And every day before that for the past month. She pulled up her usual rocking chair and peeked inside the isolette to find her tiny baby girl alert and wide eyed, staring right back at her. At 28 weeks corrected gestation and still weighing less than a pound, the possibility of actually going home one day remained a distant hope. In the meantime, ‘Serenity’s’ mother resigned herself to sitting quietly at the bedside for a few hours each day. Similar to other parents of premature infants too fragile to even touch, she had become a bystander in her baby’s life—patiently waiting for the day ‘Serenity’ no longer needed intensive care to survive.

As neonatal providers, we have become all too familiar with the overwhelming sense of powerlessness that grips every parent as soon as their infant is whisked away from the delivery room and into the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Despite efforts to paint the hallways with friendly mermaids and inviting underwater creatures, the inside of the NICU remains a universally intimidating world of alarms, ventilators and ominous diagnoses for families of every background. Well-intentioned efforts at promoting family-centered care to bridge the parent–provider gap are often discussed but difficult to carry out in the face of time constraints and high patient volume and acuity levels. Therefore, providing tangible ways to help parents cope with the ongoing emotional roller coaster NICU ride is a task usually relegated to social workers, case managers, and nursing staff in most units. Yet, a powerful intervention for addressing both infant and parental intensive care unit-related morbidity may be right at our fingertips.

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Acknowledgements

The name of the patient used in the story is fictitious to protect patient privacy and represents the collective experience of parents and families in the NICU, rather than a single patient. No external funding for this manuscript. We have no financial relationships relevant to this article to disclose.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Neonatology, Department of Pediatrics, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    L H Rubinos, M Brown, L Bahrami, L Christ & H Hurt

  2. Department of Pediatrics, The Hospital of The University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    L H Rubinos, L Christ & H Hurt

  3. Department of Pediatrics, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA

    L H Rubinos

  4. Department of Pediatrics, Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    L Bahrami

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  1. L H Rubinos
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  2. M Brown
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  3. L Bahrami
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  4. L Christ
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  5. H Hurt
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Correspondence to L H Rubinos.

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Rubinos, L., Brown, M., Bahrami, L. et al. ‘The story behind NICU reading programs’. J Perinatol 36, 930–931 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/jp.2016.155

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