Abstract
Objectives
To examine the effect of counseling on stress levels in mothers of neonates admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
Methods
This prospective research was carried out from January 2020 to December 2020 in a central India teaching hospital providing tertiary care. Parental Stressor Scale (PSS):NICU questionnaire was used to measure maternal stress among mothers of 540 admitted infants between 3 and 7 d of admission. Counseling was done at the time of recruitment and its effect was measured after 72 h and re-counseling was done. This cycle of stress assessment and counseling was repeated every 72 h till the baby was admitted in the NICU. Overall stress levels for each subscale were determined, and pre- and post-counseling stress was compared.
Results
For the subscales of sight and sound, appearance and behavior, change in the parental role, and staff behavior and communication, the median scores were 1.5 (IQR–1.2–1.88), 2.5 (2.3–2.9), 3.3 (3.0–3.6) and 1.3 (1.1–1.62), respectively indicating high stress in the parental role alteration. Counseling was effective in reducing stress levels among all mothers irrespective of various maternal factors (p <0.01). Stress reduces more with increasing number of counseling, as suggested by higher change in the stress score with increased number of counseling.
Conclusions
This study shows that NICU mothers are under remarkable stress and repeated counseling sessions targeted at particular concerns might assist.
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NP: Acquisition and interpretation of data, data analysis, drafting the article, and literature review; JS: Literature review and drafting the article; AA: Concept, interpretation of data and data analysis, and revising the article critically for important intellectual content. All the authors approved the final manuscript. JS will act as guarantor for this paper.
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The approval was obtained from the Institutional Ethical Committee of the Gandhi Medical College, Bhopal (letter number: 519/MC/IEC/2020).
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Pal, N., Agrawal, A. & Shrivastava, J. Stress Levels in Mothers of Admitted Newborns in NICU and Effect of Counseling. Indian J Pediatr 91, 17–22 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12098-023-04561-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12098-023-04561-5