721 - Prenatal education and support groups for parents whose baby will come to the NICU: why and how to get started?

Prospective parents who know their baby will be sick at birth may experience anxiety and depression; women in high-risk pregnancy units also suffer from isolation. Peer-to-peer support groups in the NICU have been demonstrated to have a positive impact on parents but they do not exist in a prenatal fashion.

Objective:

To describe the creation and development of a prenatal education and support group for parents whose baby will be admitted to the NICU.

Design/Methods:

The study had two steps: a needs assessment and a feasibility pilot study. During the needs assessment, we examined topics NICU parents would have wished to discuss prenatally. During the pilot phase, we investigated the perspectives of prospective mothers who were hospitalized on the high-risk pregnancy unit on educational support groups. Parental perspectives were investigated using mixed methods.

Results:

27/45 NICU parents who participated in NICU-workshops recommended us (in their answers to open-ended questions) to develop prenatal education and support groups. They identified several important themes: Maternal guilt, their future parental role, normalizing their experience/emotions, coping with their “broken dreams” (mourning their objectives: pregnancy, delivery, breastfeeding, parenting, etc), adapting to their new reality, control and trust. They also described educational themes: information about the NICU, what the baby would look like, technology around the baby and common neonatal interventions, who was part of the neonatal clinical team and the role of parents in this team. These findings were used by our parent-partner group to design a checklist and a presentation with pictures to moderate the workshop. The perspective of mothers from the first support groups were sought. 19 mothers hospitalized on a high-risk pregnancy service in a large academic level 4 hospital (average 32 years old, pregnancy 29.3 weeks) responded. Almost all (95%) agreed/strongly agreed that the workshop was useful, that the workshop made them feel less lonely (95%), that exchanges with other women were beneficial (95%) and gave them a certain amount of control on their situation (89%). All answers to open-ended questions were positive, for example: “ I want to congratulate your team, this workshop is an excellent idea to make pregnant women feel better and not alone!”.

Conclusion(s):

Prenatal educational workshops provide a unique and useful means to support future NICU-parents. Future investigations will explore whether these meetings will improve clinical outcomes.