Participatory Action Research in the Field of Neonatal Intensive Care: Developing an Intervention to Meet the Fathers' Needs. A Case Study

In neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) health care professionals typically give most of their attention to the infants and the mothers while many fathers feel uncertain and have an unmet need for support and guidance. This paper describes and discusses participatory action research (PAR) as a meth...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of public health research Vol. 5; no. 3; p. 744
Main Authors Noergaard, Betty, Johannessen, Helle, Fenger-Gron, Jesper, Kofoed, Poul-Erik, Ammentorp, Jette
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Italy PAGEPress Publications 21.12.2016
PAGEPress Publications, Pavia, Italy
SAGE Publishing
Subjects
Case reports
father
Fathers
Intensive care
Mothers
participatory design
patient involvement
quality improvement
participatory design
quality improvement
father
patient involvement
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Summary:In neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) health care professionals typically give most of their attention to the infants and the mothers while many fathers feel uncertain and have an unmet need for support and guidance. This paper describes and discusses participatory action research (PAR) as a method to improve NICUs' service for fathers. Our goal is to develop a father-friendly NICU where both the needs of fathers and mothers are met using an approach based on PAR that involves fathers, mothers, interdisciplinary healthcare professionals, and managers. This PAR process was carried out from August 2011 to July 2013 and included participant observations, semi-structured interviews, multi sequential interviews, workshops, focus groups, group discussion, and a seminar. The theoretical framework of validity described by Herr and Anderson's three criteria; process-, democratic-, and catalytic validity were used to discuss this PAR. Twelve fathers, 11 mothers, 48 health professionals and managers participated in the PAR process. The collaboration ensured the engagement for viable and constructive local changes to be used in designing the concept of the father friendly NICU. This paper contributed new knowledge of how PAR can be used to ensure that participants engaged in the field are involved in the entire process; consequently, this will ensure that the changes are feasible and sustainable.
Bibliography:Conflict of interest: the authors declare no potential conflict of interest.
Contributions: BN was primary responsible for conception and design; analysis and interpretation of data; drafting the article; HJ, contributed to conceptualization of the design and the article, discussed and contributed to the content and theoretical framing of the article; JA and PEK, have substantially contributed to design of the study; analysis and interpretation of data; revising the paper critically for important intellectual; JFG, contributed substantially to study design and practical implementation, data interpretation and revising of the article.
ISSN:2279-9028
2279-9036
2279-9036
DOI:10.4081/jphr.2016.744