Investigating the Correlation of Stress of Parents of Premature Children in a Neonatal Unit with Ways of Coping and the Conditions of Visiting NICU Due to Covid-19 Isolation.

INTRODUCTION

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing was considered to be the most effective measure to maintain infection control. As a result, parents have little or no access to the NICUs of their premature infants.

AIM: Of this study was to investigate the association of stress of preterm parents in a NICU with coping measures and visitation conditions due to isolation from Covid-19.

RESULTS

Our sample consisted of 62 parents; 35 (56.5%) were mothers, whose newborns were hospitalized in the NICU from November 2021 to April 2022. 35.5% of premature babies were girls with an average gestation period of 32.2 weeks (SD = 3.4) with an average birth weight of 1741.7 g (SD = 680). The most common cause of admission to the NICU was prematurity with respiratory distress (96.8%) followed by low birth weight (88.7%). A significant negative correlation was found between "Active positive coping" with "impaired bonding" (r = -0.33, p = 0.012) and "total PBQ Score" (r = -0.29, p = 0.027), so those who used active positive coping as a strategy they had less impaired attachment to their child and the less disturbance they experienced in their attachment to their child in general. On the contrary, the higher they used Behavioral disengagement as a strategy, the greater was the risk of abuse of the connection with their child (r = 0.034, p = 0.010).

CONCLUSIONS

As our research pointed, active positive coping helped with parent-infant bonding, less impaired attachment to their child. Behavioral disengagement as a strategy increased the risk of abuse of the connection with their child.