Awareness of preterm infants' behavioural cues: a survey of neonatal nurses in three Scottish neonatal units

Since the early 1980s, in neonatal practice, there has been an increasing awareness of the need to balance medical interventions against the need to provide individualised, holistic, family-centred care for preterm infants. In the neonatal intensive care unit infants can be subjected to repeated disturbance and often unpleasant procedures. It is becoming good practice to recognise the needs of preterm infants by interpreting their communication signals. This can only be achieved when caregivers are able to recognise these signals and are willing to act on them. This paper reports on a study to investigate staff awareness of these signals.