Development and Evaluation of a Tailored Mother-Infant Interaction Program for Premature Infants

Purpose:  Recently, with the increasing rate of premature babies, the number of programs for promoting mother and infant interaction has been increasing. Positive mother-infant interactions help cognitive and emotional development of premature. Mothers' sensitivity is a very important factor in forming mother-infant interactions well. But, if the mother's sensitivity does not recognize the meaning of the signal sent by the premature infant, it is often emotional difficulties such as burden of care or depression. The health status of premature infants varies from baby to baby. However, previous studies on the mother-infant interaction programs were limited providing individual mother and infant with more effective nursing strategies. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to develop a tailored mother-baby interaction program for premature and to evaluate its effect on the maternal sensitivity.

Methods: This study was completed using two stages of development and evaluation. In the development stage, a tailored mother-infant interaction program was developed based on the Barnard Mother-infant interaction model. The developed program included assessment tools of mother-infant needs and capacity, interpretation procedure, and tailored nursing strategies. In the evaluation stage, we checked the maternal sensitivity before and after the program. A total of 12 premature babies and their mothers participated in this study in 2015. To evaluate the program effect, one-group pretest-posttest design was used.

Results: At the program development stage, methodological research method was used. The mother 's competence level and the characteristics of the child (underlying disease, sleep cycle, corrected age, etc.) were identified and the program composition was organized according to the characteristics of the premature and mother. The characteristics of the child were based on the findings checked by the nurses' evaluation. The characteristics of the mother were identified by self-questionnaire based on mother characteristics in Barnard Mother-Infant Interactio Model. The findings from the paired t-test present that the scores of maternal sensitivity among participants significantly increased(t=-7.62, p<.001) after completing the developed mother-infant interaction program.

Conclusion: Tailored program depending on the mother-infant need and capacity may facilitate maternal sensitivity leading to promotion of the mother-infant interaction. The program developed through this study is expected to reduce the burden of mothers who are raising premature infants. We recommend future studies address guideline development and training opportunities for nurses and mothers on the tailored process of the mother-infant interaction program.