Abstract
Despite all the advances in healthcare technology and all the care services in the field of neonates, many infants die in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). This qualitative study investigated socio-cultural factors influencing the care for bereaved parents in three main NICUs of northwest Iran between March 2018 and April 2019. The purposeful sampling method with the maximum variation was used, and data collection was continued until obtaining rich data to answer the research question. Twenty-eight interviews were conducted with 26 healthcare providers. The thematic analysis method was applied to analyze the data, and two main themes, including “Religious context as a restriction on the parental involvement in the infant’s end-of-life care” and the “Socio-cultural challenges of the grieving process among parents”, were generated accordingly. The religious and socio-cultural contexts in the NICUs of Iran are a restriction to the presence of parents at their infants’ end-of-life phase, and health care providers are less inclined to have parents in the NICU at the time of infant death.
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Abbreviations
- NICU:
-
Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
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This article is a part of a Nursing doctoral dissertation with code 9221199001 and was done in Tehran University of Medical Sciences and Health Services
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The study was approved by Tehran university of medical sciences. The certification code number is IR.TUMS.FNM.REC.1396.2392.
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Fadaei, Z., Mirlashari, J., Nikbakht Nasrabadi, A. et al. Silent Mourning: Infant Death and Caring for Iranian Parents Under the Influence of Religious and Socio-cultural Factors. J Relig Health 62, 859–878 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-022-01684-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-022-01684-5