Objective: Collaborative clinician-family relationships are necessary for the delivery of successful patient- and family-centered care (PFCC) in the NICU. Challenging clinician-family relationships may undermine such collaboration and the potential impacts on patient care are unknown.
Study design: Consistent caregivers were surveyed to describe their relationships and collaboration with families of infants hospitalized ≥ 28 days. Medical record review collected infant and family characteristics hypothesized to impact relationships. Mixed methods analysis was performed.
Results: Clinicians completed 243 surveys representing 77 families. Clinicians reported low collaboration with families who were not at the bedside and/or did not speak English. Clinicians perceived most clinician-family relationships impact the infant's hospital course. Negative impacts included communication challenges, mistrust or frustration with the team and disruptions to patient care.
Conclusion: This study identifies features of clinician-family relationships that may negatively impact an infant's NICU stay. Targeting supports for these families is necessary to achieve effective PFCC.
© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature America, Inc.