Objectives : A practical neonatal pain care education program is required to improve pain care in the NICU. Therefore, we surveyed the NICU nurses' perceptions of parents' involvement in pain care and their education needs in order to design a framework for the education program.
Methods : An anonymous structured question survey was sent by mail to 205 nurses who had been members of the Japan Academy of Neonatal Nursing for more than three years. Questions asked were on each respondent's background, pain care circumstances at the NICU to which the respondent was as-signed, perceptions of parents' involvement, and education needs. Data were descriptively analyzed.
Result : In total, 107 valid responses were received. Seventy percent of respondents had taken a seminar in neonatal pain care outside of the hospital. Seventy-six percent of respondents had adopted the hospital philosophy of family-centered care. Most of the respondents affirmed the parents' involvement in pain care and desired further knowledge about neonatal pain care for themselves, staff, and parents.
Conclusion : NICU nurses wish the program to contain much discussion and practice to stimulate use of knowledge. We devised a framework in which discussion and practice account for 62 percent of the total time.