Introduction: A preterm birth is one that occurs before 37 weeks' gestation. Parents are never prepared for the birth of a premature infant, which can be a major crisis that can profoundly change the tasks and responsibilities of parenthood. Involving parents in the health care of their preterm baby aims to achieve two goals: the exchange of information between parents and the health care team on the identification of specific behaviours and signs that indicate the baby's needs, and the active participation of parents in the development of the health care plan. Purpose: To explore the role of the nurse in supporting parents of premature babies. Methods: A descriptive method of work was used, reviewing the literature in the field of support for parents of preterm infants. The Slovenian and English literature was reviewed. To retrieve the articles, searches were performed in the bibliographic search engines Google Scholar and PubMed, and in the bibliographic databases Medline, CINAHL and ScienceDirect. Results: Nurses play a central role in the care of premature babies; they can alleviate parents' stress by building caring relationships. Sharing knowledge and information, providing mental and physical support to parents, involving parents in decision-making and empowering them in their child's care can help reduce parental stress. Discussion and conclusion: Our literature review found that support for parents from health professionals is essential and that health professionals need more training in communication. The findings show that they do not have enough confidence to support parents and that information needs to be given more correctly to prevent communication breakdowns. New research should be carried out, research in Slovenia and more modern methods of communication skills should be implemented.
|
