The effectiveness of a parent participation improvement program for parents on partnership, attachment infant growth in a neonatal intensive care unit: A randomized controlled trial

Parent participation based on collaboration with nurses is recognized as an important concept in neonatal care. However, there is a lack of research providing specific strategies to promote parent participation in clinical activities, and there are few studies including both mothers and fathers. The purpose of this study was to develop a Parent Participation Improvement Program for parents in neonatal intensive care units, and to evaluate its effects on parents’ partnerships with nurses, attachment to infants, and infants’ body weight. The study consisted of two phases. The first phase involved development of the Parent Participation Improvement Program. The second phase, a parallel two-group randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of this program, was conducted from February to August 2017 in the neonatal intensive care unit of a hospital in Seoul, South Korea. A total of 66 infants born at