Objectives: Family-centered care was introduced into neonatal nursing practice in Japan at the end of the 1970s. It attracted much interest with the spread of family-centered development care. Today, however, what NICU nurses think about their practice based on FCC, and the reasons it is difficult to practice are not clearly understood. We therefore surveyed the perceptions of NICU nurses on nursing practice based on FCC, and discussed ways of promoting FCC.
Methods: An anonymous structured question survey was sent by mail to 674 members of the Japan Academy of Neonatal Nursing in April 2011 and May 2012. Questions asked were on the respondents' background, nursing practice based on family-centered care, and reasons why practicing FCC was difficult. Data were descriptively analyzed and then a t - test and a one- way ANOVA were carried out.
Results: 340 valid responses were received (51.4%).
1) Concerning practicing or being mindful of the basic concept of FCC, "participation" scored significantly highly, while the score for "collaboration" was low.
2) For all the basic concepts, the response "mindful" scored significantly higher than "practice".
3) As for the reasons why nursing practice based on FCC is difficult, most issues were related to knowledge and practice. The most frequent response was "doctors, nursing staff, and head nurses do not know how to practice the concept of FCC".
4) The difficulty of nursing practice based on FCC correlated with age and years of total clinical experience, NICU experience, and experience in other areas.
Conclusion: Developing the Guidelines and providing education and training are considered necessary to promote nursing practice based on FCC.