Developing the Scale of Parental Participation in Care: Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and Examining the Scale's Psychometric Properties.

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to develop the Scale of Parental Participation in Care: Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and to examine the Scale's psychometric properties. METHODS: The draft scale' items were created through relevant literature reviews, focus group interviews with nurses, and content validity evaluations by experts. Study data were collected in the neonatal intensive care unit of a public hospital in Turkey from June 2019 to February 2020. The study participants were comprised of 205 parents with an infant in the neonatal intensive care unit. The Scale's content validity and construct validity were evaluated to determine the validity of the scale. Cronbach's alpha coefficient, item-total score correlations, and intraclass correlation were calculated to evaluate the Scale's reliability. RESULTS: Content validity index values of the draft form of the scale ranged from 0.93 to 1.00. The final scale consisted of 18 items. From the exploratory factor analysis, it was found that the scale structure comprised a single factor that accounted for 51.92% of the total variance. Concerning the reliability of the Scale, it was calculated that Cronbach's alpha level was 0.93; item total correlations ranged from 0.48 to 0.78; intraclass correlation level was 1.000. CONCLUSION: It was found that the Parental Participation in Care Scale: Neonatal Intensive Care Unit was valid and reliable in this sample.

Effects of two different positions on stress, pain and feeding tolerance of preterm infants during tube feeding.

AIMS: This study aims to investigate the effects of semi-elevated right lateral and semi-elevated supine positions on feeding tolerance, stress severity and pain levels among premature infants during tube feeding. METHODS: This was a randomized cross-over clinical trial. A total of 34 premature infants who were fed via orogastric tube were included in this study. Feeding tolerance was assessed by abdominal circumference measurements and checking gastric residuals; this assessment was single blinded. Physiological values were evaluated before, during and after tube feeding. The stress severity and pain levels of the infants were also evaluated independently by the researchers before, during and after tube feeding. A significance level of .05 was accepted for all statistical analyses. RESULTS: There were no difference between infants' vital signs, stress and pain scores according to feeding positions before tube feeding (p > .05). By feeding positions, a statistically significant difference was found between infants' vital signs, abdominal circumference and gastric residuals of infants during tube feeding. Pain and stress levels of infants were found to be significantly higher in the semi-elevated supine position during tube feeding (p < .05). CONCLUSIONS: Use of the semi-elevated right lateral position during tube feeding was found to have a more helpful effect in reducing stress and pain among premature infants when compared with the use of the semi-elevated supine position.