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Aim: To describe mothers' and fathers' experiences with public health nursing and child and family health centre services in the postnatal period, both as a couple and as individuals. Method: A phenomenological reflective lifeworld research approach with a descriptive design was chosen. A purposive sample of 10 mothers and 10 fathers were interviewed twice, 1–2 and 6–8 weeks postpartum, using joint and individual interviews. By focusing on being open and flexible, the data were analyzed to elucidate a meaningful structure of the phenomenon. Results: The findings revealed that parents' experiences with public health nurse (PHN) and Child and Family Health Centre (CFHC) services in the postnatal period are characterised by a longing to be seen and confirmed both as unique individuals and as a family by the PHN. Although an increased need for both lay and professional care is prominent during the postnatal period, the parents drew a varied picture of their experiences demonstrating that the CFHC services are focussing almost exclusively on mother and child. Conclusion: A public health nurse can contribute to strengthen parenthood and promote the family's health when the focus is on the new baby. Being cared for while learning to care for the baby is pivotal in a phase that involves both joy and vulnerability. This study adds knowledge concerning the importance of both parents being seen and confirmed by the PHN as unique individuals and a family unit in the postnatal period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Health ministries in Europe are investing increasingly in innovative digital technologies. Older adults, who have not grown up with digital innovation, are expected to keep up with technological shifts as much as other age groups. This is ethically challenging, as it may threaten a sense of dignity and well-being in older adults. Research objective: To clarify the phenomenon of sense of dignity experienced in older adults, concerning how their expectations and needs are met within the context of digitally led healthcare in Norway. Research design: A Reflective Lifeworld Research design was chosen, and purposive, in-depth interviews were conducted. Participants and research context: The participants were 13 adults 75 years and older from Northern Norway, living at home and not receiving consistent assistance. Ethical considerations: Followed the principles of the Helsinki Declaration. This study was approved by the Social Science Data Services in Norway (project number 916119). Interviews were conducted carefully within a safe environment chosen by the participants. Findings: Older adults experience that using new digital systems in healthcare makes them become dependent with experiences of helplessness. They feel an increased sense of dependency on other people, and that recognition can assail their experience of personal dignity. Older adults not only expect digitally led healthcare to give them a feeling of safety but also experience feeling insecure concerning privacy and loss of possibilities for dialogue with healthcare providers. They are met by demands from society, which they often struggle to achieve. Conclusion: The phenomenon of sense of dignity experienced in older adults, concerning how their expectations and needs are met within digitally led healthcare, indicates a sense of feeling lost in the digital world. Further, innovative healthcare lacks focus on ethical performance. This impacts their perception of dignity, as loss of dignity is noticed especially in its rupture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim of this study is to describe new fathers' expectations of and experiences with municipal postnatal healthcare services. Methods: A phenomenological reflective lifeworld research (RLR) approach has been used. Ten fathers were interviewed about their expectations of and experiences with municipal postnatal healthcare services, and the data were analysed to elucidate a meaning structure for the phenomenon. Results: The essential meaning of the phenomenon of fathers' expectations of and experiences with municipal postnatal health care described as going blindly into the women's world. The essential meaning is further explicated through its four constituents: not knowing what to ask for, feeling excluded, seeking safety for the family and longing for care. Conclusions: Entering the postnatal period with sparse knowledge about the child and family healthcare services available is difficult for the fathers who do not know what to ask for and what to expect. The fathers' feel excluded by the public health nurse, and the postnatal health care is seen as a mother–baby–public health nurse triad. The feeling of exclusion and inequality might be avoided if public health nurses focused both on mothers' and fathers' individual follow-up needs in the postnatal period and on seeing the newborn baby and the parents as a family unit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Pre‐eclampsia can lead to premature birth aimed at saving mothers' and infants' lives. Few studies have addressed how women with serious pre‐eclampsia experience to become mothers to a premature infant. The aim was to describe the phenomenon of mothers' experience of being a seriously ill with pre‐eclampsia and on the same time becoming a mother of a premature infant. Methodology: A reflective phenomenological lifeworld approach with a descriptive design was used. Nine mothers were interviewed twice, between 6 and 24 days and 16 days to 16 weeks postpartum. The analysis was done by finding meaning units, and then contemporary clusters were made. The process was a movement between figure and background. The essence with its constituents emerged. Findings: Being a seriously ill mother of a premature infant requires journeying through physical and psychological suffering to be able to care and take responsibility for their beloved infants. The essence had the following constituents: conflicting feelings concerning giving birth, reflecting upon the borderline of life, longing for the infant, becoming a mother in actuality and experiencing physical exhaustion. Conclusion: Because of the acuteness of the birth and the infant's prematurity, the mothers had various feelings about becoming mothers. Existential issues concerning life and death were triggered regarding their own lives and those of their infants. Their experiences are different from those of other NICU mothers; their illnesses initially restricted them from being with their infants. The mothers found that their own health and the fact that their infants were premature and had to stay in the NICU restricted them from being able to take care of their infants. While they recovered, they strived to act as they felt a real mother should. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Consequences of separation between preterm newborns and their parents have been discussed in many aspects, thus skin-to-skin care ( SSC) has become common practice in Scandinavian Neonatal Intensive Care Units ( NICUs) since the 1980s. The International workshop on Kangaroo Mother Care ( KMC), 2009, recommends implementation of continuous KMC as the gold standard pervading all medical and nursing care, based on empirical studies and clinical guidelines and they suggest that KMC may be used during terminal care in agreement with parents. Parents have a strong desire to be near their child and give support and emotional comfort when the condition of the child requires it, and it has been suggested that medical staff expect parents to be with the neonates, and therefore, encourages them to hold the neonate while it is dying. The practice of SSC at the end of life has been under-researched, however. Aim The aim of this study, which is part of a larger study on neonatal nursing care, was to describe the phenomenon of how nurses enact SSC for dying preterm newborns and their parents. Design A phenomenological reflective life world design. Setting and participants A purposive sample of 18 nurses from three Scandinavian NICUs. Findings The essential meaning of the phenomenon was expressed as strong belief in the urgency of SSC in providing mutual proximity and comfort for dying preterm newborns and their parents. The nurses act upon this belief and upon an engagement in securing the best possible present and future experiences of being close, in which the SSC is understood as a necessary premise in achieving the intended optimal conditions. The findings are elaborated in relation to previous caring and nursing research and phenomenology. Conclusions Skin-to-skin care for dying preterm newborns and their parents is the preferred caring practice among Scandinavian NICU nurses who consider it of major importance to facilitate proximity and comfort through SSC when the newborn is still alive. The authors suggest this practical knowledge from NICU nurses perspective to be acknowledged in discussions concerning end-of-life care for preterm newborns and their parents and we recommend more formal establishment of this practice. Further research is needed on parents' experiences of skin-to skin caring in this vulnerable end of life situation of 'being with' their dying newborn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to articulate the essence and constituents of neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) nurses' experiences in enacting skin-to-skin care (SSC) for preterm newborns and their parents. SSC is commonly employed in high-tech NICUs, which entails a movement from maternal-infant separation. Parents' opportunities for performing the practice have been addressed to NICU staff, with attitude and environment having crucial influence. The study was carried out with a reflective lifeworld research approach. Data were collected in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway by open-dialogue interviews with a purposive sample of 18 NICU nurses to achieve the essence of and variation within the phenomenon. NICU nurses experience balancing what they consider preterm newborns' current and developmental needs, with readiness in both parents for SSC. They share an experience of a change in the history of NICU care to increased focus on the meaning of proximity and touch for the infants' development. The phenomenon of enacting SSC is characterized by a double focus with steady attention to signals from both parents and newborns. Thereby, a challenge emerges from the threshold of getting started as the catalyst to SSC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illuminates the essence of Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) nurses' attitudes in skin-to-skin care (SSC) practice for preterm infants and their parents. Health care providers are in a unique position to influence the dynamic between infants and parents, and SSC affects both partners in the dyad. The design is descriptively phenomenological in terms of reflective lifeworld approach. Eighteen Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian nurses from NICUs offering varied possibilities and extents of SSC participated. NICU nurses' attitudes in SSC practice are ambivalent. The nurses consider the sensory, wellness, and mutuality experiences to be primary and vital and enact SSC as much as possible. But "as much as possible" is a broad and varied concept, and their attitudes are ambivalent in terms of not always facilitating what they consider to be the optimal caring conditions. The source of NICU nurses' ambivalent attitudes in SSC practice is a complex interplay of beliefs, norms, and evidence, which have a multidisciplinary basis. The ambivalent attitudes are, to a great extent, the result of the need to balance these multidisciplinary concerns. This needs to be acknowledged in considering SSC practice, as well as acknowledging that clinical judgments concerning optimal SSC depend on parents and infants unlimited access to each other, which NICU nurses can influence.