Developmental Care Practices at Neonatal Intensive Care Units in Developing Countries. In: Laher, I. (eds) Handbook of Healthcare in the Arab World. Springer, Cham.

Preterm infants are at greater risk for short- and long-term complications. Infants born preterm have immature organs which put them at greater mortality and morbidity than full-term infants. An unfavorable neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) may aggravate this morbidity. However, the iatrogenic effects could be reduced through providing a suitable environment. Developmental care (DC) is a broad category of interventions designed to minimize the stress and noise of the NICU environment. Nurses at NICU are uniquely positioned to facilitate safe and less stressful environment while they provide care for preterm neonates through adopting developmental care practice. Neonatal nurses? attitudes toward developmental care practices as well as their knowledge toward a component of developmental care have not yet been studied exclusively in developing countries. The lack of comprehensive DC implementation, as well as the inadequate knowledge of factors in?uencing NICU nurses? development care practices in NICU, highlights a gap between theoretical knowledge, research, and practice. Knowing nurses? attitude toward developmental care practices could help in predicting the way they behave with and care for the vulnerable preterm. Provided information about their knowledge level will also help in the development of a nursing education strategy to improve the experiences and outcomes for the preterm neonates. The most supportive factors for integrating developmental care (DC) into traditional practice include having an appropriate environment, dedicated time, competent personnel, managed workloads, nursing leadership, and infant health status.