Paternal Experience during the Child Hospitalization in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Abstract

Introduction: The desire for a child is also a characteristic feeling of man throughout his life. However, when a premature and / or risk birth occur, require specialized care in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, parents are surprised by many difficult feelings to overcome. Objective: To understand the paternal experience during hospitalization of their child in the neonatal intensive care unit. Method: This is an exploratory-descriptive study of qualitative approach, carried out in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of a university hospital in Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, through interviews, from a semi- structured instrument. It was submitted to the Content Analysis Technique, mode of cross-thematic analysis for analysis of the data. Results: The nine parents interviewed were aged between 22-39 years and the majority had not completed high school providing a monthly family income between 1 to 5.7 minimum wages. The interpretation of the results allowed the construction of the following thematic categories: Feelings paternal experienced against the hospitalization of a child in the Intensive Care Unit and faced difficulties against the hospitalization of a newborn child in Intensive Care Unit. Conclusion: Parents involved in the study demonstrated great suffering. Among the difficulties there is the lack of information from the health team and the work routine that prevents the parent to accompany the child. Such factors could be circumvented or diminished there be greater commitment on the part of health professionals to include these parents in care to be performed in infants with life- threatening and may even encourage baby's development by providing the appropriate bonding.