Maternal caring ability with the preterm infant: A Rogerian concept analysis

Aim: To analyze the concept of maternal caring ability for a preterm infant to develop an operational definition. Background: Each year, many newborns are born preterm and admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Although their mothers are prepared for discharge home by the staff, it is difficult to identify an operational definition of their maternal caring ability for the preterm infant. Design: Concept analysis. Data sources: Searches used PubMed, as the primary health-related literature, ProQuest, Science Direct, CINHAL, web of science, Scopus, and Google Scholar. Keywords caring ability, mother, and preterm infant were used to analyze the development of the concept from 1965 to 2020. Methods: Rogers' and Knafl's evolutionary approach has been used to explain the concept of maternal caring ability for the preterm infant. Results: The combined searches yielded 23,291 documents published in English. After the screening process, 43 documents were selected. The Graneheim and Lundman analysis method was used to identify the themes related to the attributes of maternal caring ability. Findings showed the caring ability to have four antecedents (maternal characteristics, support systems, infant characteristics, and the illness severity), four attributes (knowledge and skill in neonatal care, self-efficacy, sensitivity, responsibility, and problem-solving), and three consequences (parental adjustment, improving infant growth and development, and improving parent-infant relationships). Conclusion: The caring ability of the mother of a preterm infant is grounded in an adequate knowledge of caregiving needs of a preterm infant, high caregiving skills, a sense of self-efficacy, problem-solving, sensitivity, and responsibility.