Balancing hope for extremely premature babies
For parents with strong religious beliefs, hoping for a miracle for a sick child is common.
However, for extremely premature babies (defined as aged 24 weeks gestation or less), hoping for a miracle can be a delicate balancing act.
A new study has looked at how nurses perceive parents belief in divine intervention.
The study found that while nurses didn’t want parents to loose hope their baby would survive, that desperately hoping for divine intervention can needlessly prolong the inevitable. Janet Green is the Course Co-ordinator for neonatal nursing in the Faculty of Health at the University of Technology. She speaks to Ellen Leabeater about the study.
Image: Ruth Hartnup on Flickr.
