Parental satisfaction on moving from open bay to single-family rooms neonatal intensive care unit

The purpose of the study was to assess the impact of moving from open bay units (OBU) to single-family rooms (SFR) on parental satisfaction in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) An observational longitudinal cohort study was conducted between February 2021 until January 2024, during which time the setting changed from OBU to SFR with a mixed transitional phase in between. All parents of infants admitted were eligible for inclusion. The Empathic-N was used to measure parental satisfaction. The Empathic-N was filled out by 110 mothers and 76 partners of 148 infants. The overall satisfaction when moving from an OBU and SFRs showed no statistical significant increase for both parents. Partners showed a statistically significant increase in the domains Communication and information (p = .012) and Organization (p = .012) after moving to SFRs. For mothers, only several statements within these domains showed a significant increase after transitioning to SFRs. In conclusion, parental satisfaction increased in specific domains after the transition from an OBU to SFR environment in a level III NICU. However, this improvement was modest and differed between mothers and partners. In case of pre-existing high parental satisfaction rates moving from OBU to SFR is not an important contributor to parental satisfaction.