Mother's experience of having a preterm infant in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, a Phenomenological Study

Understanding the experiences of mothers could be as a strategy for the physicians, nurses who are working in NICU and administrators in the care centers in order to provide supports for parents, particularly mothers and an effective step to improve the quality of nursing care of premature infants and their parents.

In this study, one of the qualitative research methods as descriptive phenomenology was used with Colaizzi approach. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 20 mothers with experience of a preterm infant in intensive care unit of treatment- educational centers of children and Alzahra(s) of Tabriz to share these experiences in 2010.

Among all the results of this study 4 themes were emerged which indicated structure of mothers’ experiences of hospitalization of a preterm infant in NICU. Themes and subthemes of this study were as: Sense of Alienation, Lack of control, Caring and Depravation.

According to the findings mothers were encountered with some positive and negative experiences. In this regard nurse’s practice was so effective to mothers’ ability and their partnership in taking care of the infant in order to form positive experiences and reduce the negative ones. Thus promoting some methods to support mothers’ feelings and to share caring of their babies seems to be necessary.