Keeping families close Partners in neonatal care and research

Overall, this thesis confirms and builds upon previous evidence, that including and accommodating parents as “new” and equal partners into neonatal care and research improves outcomes in families and their preterm infants who require hospitalization in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). In this thesis several interventions such as single family rooms, family integrated care (FICare) and couplet-care for the mother-infant dyad are studied extensively. This thesis also includes the operationalization of parent-provider communication and parent participation in neonatal care by means of systematic reviews of the published literature and the development of a tool for parent participation in the neonatal ward. It concludes with clinical studies in mothers and fathers of preterm infants admitted to an innovative FICare model in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.