Table.
Qualitative Studies Reviewed
| Author(s) and Year | Design | Participants | Data Collection | Key Findings |
| Salonen (1998) | Phenomenological | 9 mothers | Interviews | The new mother experiences caring communication in sharing her life situation with the midwives. |
| Noyes (1999) | Grounded theory | 10 mothers | Interviews | Initial shock/crisis and impact of child's appearance. |
| Fenwick, Barclay, & Schmied (2001) | Descriptive Qualitative | 28 mothers 20 nurses | Interviews | Positive mother-nurse relationship facilitates sharing on a “deeper” level and increases mother's confidence, sense of control, and feelings of connection to her infant. |
| Nystrom & Axelsson (2002) | Phenomenological | 8 mothers | Interviews | Themes: Being an outsider; feelings of despair, powerlessness, disappointment, and lack of control reflected in emotional instability, threat, guilt, and insecurity. The theme of caring included trust, love, anxiety, relief, and closeness. |
| Callery (2002) | Qualitative | 31 mothers | Interviews | Themes: Feelings of alienation, despair, and grief; feel they were “not being a mother”; felt supervised by the nursery staff and required permission to touch and care for their infant; feelings of distance and detachment. |
| Cronin (2003) | Descriptive Qualitative | 3 mothers | Focus groups | Themes: Depression, loneliness, frustration and letting go, need for personal/professional support. |
| Butler & Galvin (2003) | Grounded theory | 8 parents | Interviews Focus groups | Themes: Parents and health-care team communicate well; parents are facilitated to integrate into the unit and do not feel a burden. |
| Rubarth (2003) | Phenomenological | 11 nurses | Interviews Focus groups | Themes: Dealing with life/death issues, blessing of life, losing the dream. Nurses expressed a feeling of helplessness and frustration while providing care to the diseased newborn. |
| Hurst (2004) | Case study | 1 mother | Interviews | Facilitation of families, access to their babies, interpretation, information and emotional support, and parental education. |
| Gale, Franck, Kools, & Lynch (2004) | Qualitative | 12 parents | Interviews Focus groups | Themes: Infant pain as source of parental distress and barriers to parental role attainment. |
| Hall (2005a) | Phenomenological | 13 parents | Interviews | Themes: Being in alien world, feeling like a spectator, being vigilant, and oscillating between hope and hopelessness. |
| Hall (2005b) | Phenomenological | 13 parents | Interviews | Themes: Experiences of joy and despair. Nurses viewed as the sole agent, ignorant nurse, distressed nurse, worried looking nurse, the eminent nurse, or the surrogate nurse. |
| Heermann, Wilson, & Wilhelm (2005) | Phenomenological | 15 mothers | Interviews | Themes: Moving from “their baby” to “my baby,” passive to active caregiving. |
| Broedsgaard & Wagner (2005) | Grounded theory | 37 parents | Interviews | Mothers emphasized frustration about separation from their premature infant and lack of knowledge. |