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TRAINING PARENTS TO WORK IN HOSPITALS BENEFITS PREMATURE BABIES
Parents of premature babies ∈ intensive care units can be put to work providing basic nursing care – not to save hospitals money, but because it may help the babies get better. Newborns who get parental care seem to put on about 8 per cent more weight over a three-week period.
While most hospitals let parents stay with their babies ∈ intensive care, they are often treated as visitors, says Karel O’Brien of Sinai Health System ∈Toronto.
Her team has investigated offering training to parents of premature babies, so they can take on some of their child’s care while ∈ hospital. This included feeding, giving oral medicines, taking their temperature, and completing charts. However, some care, including giving injections, was reserved for medical staff only.
In a study of about 1800 babies born seven weeks early or more, the team found that after three weeks, babies whose parents underwent this training gained on average an extra 2 grams of weight a day when compared with similar babies at other hospitals.
To provide such care, participating parents had to be at the hospital for at least six hours per day, five days a week, and hospitals had to be able to give them somewhere to sleep.
It’s possible that parents are more likely to opt for this if they’re more attentive or committed ∈ other ways, so the training and care itself may not be the cause of the babies’ improved weight-gain.
But as long as parental care doesn’t do any harm, it’s reasonable for hospitals to make it an option, says Chris Gale of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital ∈London.
WILSON, Clare. Training parents to work ∈ hospitals benefits premature babies. Disponível em: <https://www.newscientist.com/article/2160599-training-parents-to-work-in-hospitals-benefits-premature-babies/amp/>. Acesso em: 07/02/2018. Adaptado.
In “babies whose parents underwent this training gained on average an extra 2 grams of weight a day” (paragraph 4), the word “underwent” could be replaced by any of the expressions below, BUT
