Facilitating bonding between the premature infant and its parents

This collaborative project was started by the nurses and health care professionals who are members of the PremUp Foundation for scientific cooperation. It is financed solely by Pampers. Its aim is to gather information from parents and health care professionals to improve the bond between parents and premature babies.

There are numerous complex factors influencing this bonding process. Nevertheless, those associated with hospitalisation and the treatment of parents in the health care services can be examined and improved. Even if factors such as parental stress and anguish have been considered, no study has as yet been done prospectively of the subjective evaluation by the parents of what helps create the bond between parent and child.

In practice, a completely anonymous questionnaire is submitted to nurses attached to the three poles of referral: Robert Debré Hospital, the CHI of Créteil and the Hospital Centre Cochin-Port Royal. This study involves more than 300 nurses of the neonatology departments. Moreover, individual's parents qualitative interviews are led by a psycho-sociologist from the CSA Institute, which is carrying out this enquiry. The results of this study will be presented in September 2010 and will be used in professional training.