GOLD Learning Speakers

This presentation will focus on the nurturing care of extremely preterm infants and their parents. Parent-infant separation is commonplace in NICUs and even more if the infant is born extremely preterm. Parent’s presence could be restricted by the rules and routines in the neonatal intensive care environment and skin-to-skin contact is not always possible due to the infant’s condition. Early and extensive contact between the infant and the parents enables the parents to get to know their infant and to feel and act like parents. At the NICU in Uppsala, Sweden, our experience is that parents, even those who have an extremely preterm infant want to be present and to stay close, 24/7, to their infant during the infants NICU stay. The aim of this presentation is to report clinical experiences from the NICU in Uppsala about how the NICU environment and NICU staff can facilitate or hinder parental presence, parental participation, and skin-to-skin contact when the infant is born extremely preterm.