Effects of Maternal Needs Preparation on Satisfaction and Anxiety of Mothers Having Premature Infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Abstract

The purpose of this experimental design was to examine the effects of maternal needs preparation on need response satisfaction and anxiety of mothers having premature infants in the neonatal intensive care unit of a tertiary hospital in southern Thailand. Purposive sampling and random assignment using minimization were used to recruit mother-preterm infant dyads to either the experimental (n = 37) or control groups (n = 37). Dyads in the experimental group received standard care and maternal needs preparation 3 hours/day for 3 consecutive days whereas dyads in the control group received standard care. Data were collected using three questionnaires: 1) the mother and infant demographic, 2) the maternal need response satisfaction, and 3) the maternal anxiety. The content validities of all questionnaires were examined by three experts. Questionnaires 2 and 3 were tested for reliability, yielding Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of .91 and .93, respectively. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, chi-squared, and t-test.

The results revealed that the mean score of maternal need response satisfaction in the experimental and control groups on Day 3 was significantly higher than that on Day 1 (t = 8.90, p = .000; t = 3.62, p = .001). The mean scores of maternal need response satisfaction on Day 3 in the experimental group was significantly higher than that in the control group (t = -7.03, p = .000). In contrast to the control group (t = -1.98, p = .056), the mean score of maternal anxiety in the experimental group on Day 3 was significantly lower than that on Day 1 (t = -5.70, p = .000). The mean scores of maternal anxiety on Day 1 in both groups were not significantly different (t = 0.49, p = .314). The mean scores of maternal anxiety on Day 3 in the experimental group was significantly higher than that in the control group (t = 2.70, p = .004). Therefore, nurses should provide the maternal needs preparation program to mothers having preterm infants. By doing this, the two nursing care quality indicators (e.g., maternal need response satisfaction and maternal anxiety) will be improved.