Effects of single family room architecture on parent-infant closeness and family centered care in neonatal environments : a single-center pre-post study

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of a single family room architecture in a neonatal intensive care unit (SFR-NICU) on parents’ presence, parent–infant skin-to-skin contact (SSC) and the quality of family centered care. STUDY DESIGN: Two cohorts of parents of preterm infants were compared: those in the unit before and after the move to SFR-NICU. The parents used daily diaries to report their presence and SSC, and they responded to daily text message questions about the quality of family centered care. RESULTS: Parents spent more time in the SFR-NICU, but no significant change was found in SSC. Parents rated the quality of family centered care highly in both unit architectures, without a change in rating after the move. CONCLUSION: The SFR-NICU increased parents’ presence but not SSC. The change in architecture did not affect parents’ evaluations of the quality of family centered care, which was already highly rated before the move.©The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visithttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Open access funding provided by University of Turku (UTU) including Turku University Central Hospital.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed