Fostering Fatherhood in NICU and Changes in Fathers' Feelings Toward Newborn Babies / 日本農村医学会雑誌

Along with changes in the child-rearing environment, the role that fathers are expected to play in child care has come to be regarded as more important today than ever. At our neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), we have a childcare course for fathers with the aim of bringing out paternal love in them and encourage them into doing kangaroo care. In actuality, however, many fathers, who are pressed with business, find it difficult to participate in the childcare program. This study was conducted to clarify the effects of the relationships between fathers and newborn babies in hospital and the paternal involvement in child care upon the development of fatherhood. For this purpose, the changes in fathers' feelings toward their babies during hospitalization were graded by the use of “emotion scores” developed by Hanazawa. The results showed that the score for “closeness” went up in all the subjects. The largest number of subjects were found to have feelings that they really became fathers especially when they took their child into their arms. This form of contact was though to be an important factor contributing to the awakening of fatherhood. As the day babies are scheduled to be discharged from the hospital was drawing near, it was found, not a small number of fathers were beginning to feel “uncertain” or “uneasy”. This feelings could be taken for granted especially when their babies were born with low birth weight. We thought it necessary to develop a program tailored for fathers individually and prepare an environment where fathers and their babies feel comfortable.

Attempts at Activating Nursing Care Workers' Conference / 日本農村医学会雑誌

To nurses who are doing the actual hands-on work on shifts, the daily conference is indispensable for sharing information among them, working as a united body and addressing the problems of patients accurately. Up until some years ago, however, the conference in our ward had been somehow devoid of continuity and substance. So, by the use of a crosswise chart (a radar chart?), analyses were made to find out what was wrong and what the staff thought about the conference, and an effective approach to making the conference fruitful was sough. A new set of rules were laid down, which resulted in helping the conference become animated. A check of nurses' logs showed a great deal of improvement in terms of the inspector's scores.