The seven points of developmental care for preterm neonates: Nurses’ knowledge and attitudes in the NICU Room

Preterm neonates (premature infants) are born with various risks that require them to be admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) which is full of stressors. The impact of stressors in the NICU on infants can be minimized by the provision of seven points of developmental care. Unfortunately, the NICU nurses’ knowledge and attitude in implementing the seven points of developmental care was still lacking, that not all nurses did. This study aims to identify the effect of education on the seven points of developmental care in increasing the NICU nurses’ knowledge and attitude. The pre-experimental research design of one group pretest-posttest was chosen, involving 28 NICU nurses who were selected by using simple random sampling technique. The inclusion criteria of respondents included nurses with more than 1 year of work experience. Education was given 3 times with a duration of 2 hours through online videos. Data were analyzed using the Wilcoxon test. There was a significant increase in knowledge and attitudes on the aspects of stress cues (p= 0.025), principles of cooperation with family (p=0.003), Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) of Cooperation with family (p= 0.012), Infant Positioning Assessment Tool (p= 0.003), minimizing pain by touching (p=0.002), route of providing nutrition (p= <0.001), and non-nutritive sucking p= 0.004). Education on the seven points of developmental care is able to increase the NICU nurses’ knowledge and attitudes in implementing interventions for preterm neonates. The provision of education is required regularly in order to refresh and update information for the NICU nurses so that they are able to provide appropriate, optimal, and up-to-date care for preterm neonates.