haydeh heidari - Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, Shahrekord University of Medical Sciences, Shahrekord, Iran
Marzieh Hasanpour - Pediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care Nursing Department, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Marjaneh Fooladi - Fulbright Scholar and Professor at Florida State University, College of Nursing
Feiz Awat - Faculty of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran

Background: Once an infant is hospitalized in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), the entire family dynamics is disrupted due to stressors such as interruption in maternal-infant bonding, abandonment of other siblings and financial burdens. Combination of multiple stressors often ends in divorce or other devastating results. In this study, a novel survey questionnaire has been developed to assess the level of parental stress in NICU and identify the warning signs, in order to provide assistance to young couples in need of help. Methods: Qualitative content analysis was performed to survey 13couplesrecruited from various teaching hospitals in Isfahan, Iran. Results: The initial part of the questionnaire was designed to assess parents’ stress level with an expected content validity index of 0.78 or above and to measure face validity of the questionnaire, all the items received a mean impact score of 1.5 or above, and the Cronbach’s alpha reliability of the 12-item questionnaire equaled to 0.904.Based on the factor analysis, the items with a correlation coefficient of less than 0.4 were excluded (one item was omitted). Conclusion: Most survey questionnaires found in the existing literature have investigated the types of stressors experienced by parents with an infant in NICU. In this study, researchers offer a novel 11-item questionnaire designed to assess the level of stress among parents with a hospitalized infant in NICU.

Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, parents, Scale Development, stress