The Swedish approach to nurturing extremely preterm infants and their families: A nursing perspective
Ylva Thernström Blomqvist, Johan Ågren, Victoria Karlsson
Abstract
Nurturing extremely premature infants is a complicated task that not only necessitates a systematic approach to the immature physiology and its medical management, but also to the needs of the family. Infants born at 22-24 weeks require many weeks of intensive care including a long duration of mechanical ventilation, numerous stressful medical interventions, and for the parents to spend a lot of time in the Neonatal Intensive Care unit (NICU). This paper aims to outline the Swedish nursing approach to nurturing these infants and their families. The nursing care is structured so the parents are the primary caregivers supported by the staff and is based on: timely expression and provision of mother's own breast milk, early and prolonged skin-to-skin contact and close collaboration with the family. While this presentation is based on a single-center's experience, it well represents the general features of nursing provided to extremely preterm infants in Swedish NICUs.