Peer-reviewed article
The Swedish approach to nurturing extremely preterm infants and their families: A nursing perspective
Ylva Thernström Blomqvist, Johan Ågren, Victoria Karlsson ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This paper describes how Swedish neonatal intensive care units care for extremely premature infants born at 22-24 weeks and support their families. The approach emphasizes parents as primary caregivers supported by nursing staff, using mother's breast milk, skin-to-skin contact, and close family collaboration. The paper outlines nursing practices based on a single Swedish centre's experience that is representative of general Swedish NICU care.
Key points
- Nursing care is structured with parents as primary caregivers supported by staff
- Early and prolonged skin-to-skin contact is a core practice
- Timely expression and provision of mother's own breast milk is emphasized
- Close collaboration with families is fundamental to the approach
- Extremely premature infants require long-duration mechanical ventilation and numerous medical interventions
Limitations
This is a descriptive overview of nursing practices based on a single centre's experience rather than an evaluation of outcomes. The document does not provide empirical data on the effectiveness of these practices or comparative results.
Abstract
Nurturing extremely premature infants is a complicated task that not only necessitates a systematic approach to the immature physiology and its medical management, but also to the needs of the family. Infants born at 22-24 weeks require many weeks of intensive care including a long duration of mechanical ventilation, numerous stressful medical interventions, and for the parents to spend a lot of time in the Neonatal Intensive Care unit (NICU). This paper aims to outline the Swedish nursing approach to nurturing these infants and their families. The nursing care is structured so the parents are the primary caregivers supported by the staff and is based on: timely expression and provision of mother's own breast milk, early and prolonged skin-to-skin contact and close collaboration with the family. While this presentation is based on a single-center's experience, it well represents the general features of nursing provided to extremely preterm infants in Swedish NICUs.