The Impact of Implementing NIDCAP on Preterm Infants in the NICU

Therapies that have brought about sharp decreases in neonatal mortality have not brought about similar decreases in neurodevelopmental morbidity for preterm infants. Developmentally supportive care is NICU care that seeks to optimize the developmental course and outcomes for preterm infants. While other staff training programs for developmentally supportive care exist, it is the Newborn Developmental Care and Assessment Program (NIDCAP) that has been the methodology used in randomly controlled trials that demonstrate positive medical and neurobehavioral outcomes for preterm infants receiving developmentally supportive care. NICUs that care for all out-born or transported infants face unique challenges in balancing developmentally supportive nursing care with the high-technological medical needs of the most critically ill and extremely premature infants. Yet it is these most fragile infants who can most benefit from the positive impact the NIDCAP program can offer. Yet, there are no published studies documenting the impact of the NIDCAP program on neurobehavioral outcomes of these transported preterm infants exclusively. Objectives: The objective of this project is to study the impact of implementing the NIDCAP program of individualized patient consultation on the neurobehavioral organization of transported preterm infants in the NICU of a major pediatric medical center. Research Methods: A random sample of approximately 40 preterm infants will be recruited to participate in this descriptive study. In this phase-lag design, 20 infants will participate in the pre-NIDCAP intervention phase and 20 infants will participate in the post-NIDCAP intervention phase. Each infant within each phase will be videotaped during 2 routine nurse-caregiving sessions. The first session will occur within 72 hours of admission to the NICU at Children's Memorial Hospital (CMH). The second session will occur when the infant is 34-36 weeks corrected gestational age. The videotapes will be collected so that observations of the infant's physical environment and caregiving and an assessment of the infant's behavioral function can be scored randomly at the end of the study by an outside consultant without bias as to what phase the infant participated. In addition, demographic data will be collected on the sample infants. Data will be subjected to descriptive statistics, inferential statistics and correlational procedures.