FAMILY-CENTERED SERVICES IN THE NEONATAL INTENSIVE-CARE UNIT - A REVIEW OF RESEARCH

This paper is a review of family-centered intervention programs conduc ted in the NICU and supported by evaluation data. Only 10 studies on f amily-centered NICU interventions published in peer-reviewed journals since 1980 were located. Of these, three focused on intervention with the goal of benefitting the family system directly, six involved paren ts but the primary focus was the infant, and one study combined these two approaches. All the studies carried out to date have substantial l imitations arising from small sample sizes and other methodological is sues. Thus, despite the emphasis on family-centered services in curren t legislation and in the theoretical literature, little empirical rese arch is available to document the effectiveness of such approaches.