| خلاصه مقاله | Background:
The baby’s hospitalization creates specific obstacles in the process of mother-infant attachment. An essential component in the success of open visiting policies is the awareness of the factors facilitating or inhibiting it. This study aimed to investigate the nurses’ perspective on open family visitation in NICUs and its barriers and facilitators.
Methods:
This is a descriptive cross-sectional study that was conducted in 2019 in three main NICUs of Tabriz, after obtaining the ethics code from Tabriz University of Medical Sciences (IR.TBZMED.REC.1398.585). A total of 113 employed NICU nurses participated in the study through the census sampling method. Nurses’ perspectives on open visitation and its facilitators and barriers were assessed using the BAVNIQ tool and analyzed with descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation test.
Results:
Approximately 74% of participated nurses had a moderate perspective on open visitation. From their viewpoint, “Parents’ low awareness of sensitivity and hygienic principles of NICU” was the first (90.3%) barrier, and the two factors, namely “physical structure/lack of sufficient space of NICU” and “far distance between family’s residence and the hospital/having another child” were the second (86.8%) barrier with the equal percentage. “Supporting employed parents during the neonate’s hospitalization” and “providing facilities for family accommodation in hospital” were the first (82.3%) and the second (79.6%) facilitators for open visitation respectively.
Conclusion:
Most of nurses admitted the effectiveness of family visits on the infant, and the general view of open visitation was expected to be above average. However, the barriers proposed by nurses that interfered with their care activities influenced their perspectives. Therefore; the observed reluctance seems to be originated mainly from the factors inhibiting open visitation, making its implementation challenging for nurses. Awareness of the perspective of the frontline staff in caring for vulnerable infants on facilitators and barriers of open visitation may help policymakers and managers in removing obstacles, providing facilities and decision-making new visiting policies in the NICUs. |