National Evaluation of the Close Collaboration With Parents Training

Close Collaboration with Parents Training Program is an educational intervention for multidisciplinary NICU staff initially developed and implemented at Turku University Hospital to promote FCC. The intervention consists of four phases lasting 4 to 5 months each. First the healthcare staff learn to observe infant behavior. This phase aims at identifying the individual needs and features of each infant. After that, the staff observe infant behavior with the parents and learn to actively listen to parents' perceptions about their infant. During the phase III, staff learn to know the individual story of the family and their infant, which supports partnership between staff and parents. Finally, staff learn to integrate parents in decision-making and collaboratively plan the transition to home. The training is delivered through facilitator-network model in which local mentors are trained by the trainer mentors and supervisors.