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Tuesday, November 3, 2009: 1:55 PM
Learning Objective 1: Describe the content of the COPE program and its effects on parent and infant outcomes.
Learning Objective 2: Discuss key strategies for routinely implementing COPE in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
With more than 505,000 premature infants born every year in the United States (U.S.) and advances in technology leading to greater survival rates of these infants, early interventions targeting parents in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) should be standard care in order to reduce negative mental health/coping outcomes and dysfunctional parenting patterns during and following hospitalization. One such intervention is the COPE (Creating Opportunities for Parent Empowerment) program, which is an educational-behavioral skills building program for parents of pre-term infants. The COPE program consists of a series of DVDs with information preparing parents for what to expect in their pre-terms and how they can best parent them. Findings from a large scale clinical trial with 260 premature infants and their parents indicated that parents who received COPE, versus those who received a placebo-control program, have less stress in the NICU, more positive interactions with their infants, and less depressive and anxiety symptoms two months after their infants’ discharge from the NICU. In addition, length of stay was reduced by an average of four days in the NICU, and 8 days for pre-terms less than 32 weeks gestation. Unfortunately, despite the availability of evidence-based interventions like COPE, it takes on average 17 years to translate findings from research into clinical practice. This presentation will describe key strategies for translating the COPE program into routine clinical practice. Lessons learned from a project to transport COPE routinely into a NICU in a Southwestern city of the U.S. will be highlighted.