Table 2. Theme 2: providing comprehensive family support—participant quotations.
| SNo | Illustrative quotations |
|---|---|
| Building a relationship with parents | |
| Q1 | “I think [in] NICU you form more of a relationship with the parents rather than… of course the baby is there but the baby is not talking yet so the parents are the advocates for them.” (Doctor 1) |
| Q2 | “Parents aren’t expecting you… to come up with the right things. They just want you to listen and the dad actually said to me when I was going home, he said… I’ll have to remember that you’re human and that you have a life to go back to… And I felt really touched that in such an awful time he… in this all-consuming time his baby he said that and… even the mum during this time she said oh you need to you need to go through your lunch break… And it was like wow, like this mum is going through this like unimaginable pain and she’s thinking of me and that I need to eat… It was really touching.” (Nurse 3) |
| Q3 | “When you’re at cot-side for 12 hours… and if you’ve got a sick baby, the parents are normally there for that length of time as well… You see them cling on to the smallest of hope that are… you’re the ones that are talking to them and be like well, how did you get the name and stuff like that just these little conversations. So, you build up this relationship very quickly with the parents that you’ve got in front of you because you’re next to them for this whole length of time, whereas the doctors are coming in perhaps every hour. But it’s the nurses that have got their relationship with them parents and who know that baby…” (Nurse 4) |
| Q4 | “Sometimes it feels like as a nurse we are everything… we are like counsellors… sometimes I feel like you know doctor as well, multidisciplinary, cleaners just general bit of everything up and there’s so much to the day and it’s family centered care. So we’re not just caring for the baby were carrying for the family as a whole.” (Nurse 3) |
| Q5 | “It was not in his best interest and we had to get the parents on board. Luckily even though they first went through denial in the first session, but they quickly came around and I think they realise that… there was no way forward for him, and his care was withdrawn in a garden in (hospital). I was so glad that happened but in a way… Yeah, I, I think the parents were, mum was very keen on getting him outside in the fresh air with the birds singing…she just wanted that experience for him. I was happy that it was provided for them in a very controlled way.” (Doctor 1) |
| Q6 | “I always start with do you need like what… Who would you want for your support? because not everyone wants grandparents… Why would you offer that?” (Nurse 4) |
| Q7 | “The most recent experience I had the family were Hindu and as it was exceptional circumstances, we allowed the extended family to come in and we also facilitated someone that they had chosen like religious figure for them to come in and sort of lead a service, before the baby passed away and so in that sense we were caring for all the family and trying to give them memories to make with the baby.” (Nurse 3) |
NICU, neonatal intensive care unit.