A review of the medical literature reveals little data on the perceptions of health care providers regarding staff communication with parents in the NICU. We hypothesized that medical and nursing staff would have similar perceptions of: 1) staff-family relationships, 2) quality of information and 3) sources of information. We designed a Likert scale survey with 27 questions, including two open-ended questions, for health care providers in a single academic level III NICU. The survey was completed by 71 health care providers including 59 nurses (59/103) and 22 medical providers (MD=11/12, Neonatal nurse practitioner=11/13). Results: Both nursing and medical providers agreed that nurses are sensitive to babies' and families' needs and that parents feel well informed and comfortable with their baby's care plan. However, significantly fewer medical providers (56%) than nurses (83%) felt that families understood the information given to them about their baby(p=0.02). While medical providers (>80%) generally agreed that doctors are sensitive to babies' and parents' needs, fewer than half of the nurses(45-49%) agreed (p<0.05). While 85% of both nurses and medical providers felt that parents receive most of their information from their baby's nurses, both also agreed that parents may receive different information from different caregivers. In response to an open ended query regarding what health care providers imagined parents might want to say to their baby's caregivers, 6 major themes emerged: 1) the need for consistent information, 2) the need for increased physician contact, 3) the need for understandable content of the information presented, 4) the need for individualization of information, 5) the need for inclusion of parents in their baby's care plan and 6) perceived parental loss of control over issues surrounding their baby's care. The perception that nurses are the primary vehicle for communication with parents as well as the perception among the nursing staff that physicians lack sensitivity to their patients and families presents ongoing challenges for communication of health - care providers with families in the intensive care setting.