Parental views on attending neonatal intensive care ward rounds

Objectives: To ascertain parental views regarding taking part in neonatal unit ward rounds.
Design: A service evaluation project.
Setting: Tertiary neonatal intensive care unit.
Patients: Parent(s) of infants receiving care on the neonatal unit.
Interventions: Structured interviews conducted at the cot side.
Main outcome measures: Parents were asked if they knew when ward rounds occurred, whether they had attended ward rounds and if they hadn’t what were the factors inhibiting them from doing so, their experience of attending ward rounds and whether they were concerned about issues of confidentiality.
Results: Twenty-three of 24 consecutive parents agreed to be interviewed. The median age of their infants was 14 (range 3-123) days when they were interviewed. Eighty-five percent were able to identify when a nursing handover or doctor’s ward round occurred. Seventy-five percent of parents had attended at least one ward round and the median score in terms of usefulness was five out of five. Reasons for not attending included time and cost to travel to the unit, their partners were working and having other children. Parents volunteered that the nurses proactively updated them as soon as they arrived, hence making regular attendance less important. Regarding confidentiality, 85% were not concerned if other people overheard information about their baby, unless the news was bad.
Conclusions: Parents recognized the value of attending ward rounds and generally found it a positive experience, but emphasized limitations on their ability to attend.