Learning Objective #1: Understand the importance of parenting in the NICU

Learning Objective #2: Discuss the factors affecting parents' ability to visit infants in the NICU

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When infants are in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), parents may have difficulty visiting their infants due to internal or external factors especially when the infant is hospitalized for a long period. Understanding these factors may help decrease parental barriers and encourage parental visits in the NICU. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to describe factors, which affect parents' ability to visit their infants in NICU. Method: A cross sectional descriptive study was used. Forty-one biological parents, 30 mothers and 11 fathers of sick infants in the NICU participated in this study. Parents were 15 to 39 years old (Median = 30) and most of them (97.6 %) were married. Each parent was separately interviewed and audiotaped using the structured interview. Factors affecting parents' ability, including internal and external factors, were described using descriptive statistics and qualitative analysis. Findings. Almost all internal factors such as parental gender, age, financial considerations, health problems, and feeling had most effects on parents' ability to visit. Marital status and other children at home did not have any effect, which may be because most parents were married and parents had other family members taking care of other children at home while visiting. In terms of external factors, even though most infants did not have severe medical problems, parents tended toward visit infrequently when their infants had more medical problems. NICU appearance, health care personnel, and hospital policy also had a high effect on parental visits. Especially, the hospital policy encouraged parents to frequently visit because of recent changes that allowed parents to visit 24 hours a day. Implications: Both internal and external factors affect parents' ability to visit their infants in the NICU. Neonatal nurses can develop intervention strategies to support and enhance parental visitation after identifying what factors encourage or impede visitation.