Part 1 book “Trauma-Informed care in the NICU” has contents: Trauma and the NICU experience, core measures for Age-Appropriate care, guidelines for pain and stress prevention, assessment, management, and the family, guidelines for the healing environment, and other contents. | As a neonatal nurse and educator for more than 30 years I have seen firsthand the impact our neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) have on infants and their families. While not a new concept, few health professionals understand or necessarily like the term “trauma-informed care,” yet that is what our neonates and families need. This book addresses the most important issues that impact neonatal care. Using evidence to support the interventions may lead more health professionals to support the implementation. Use of a competency model will assist supervisors in measuring outcomes for both the health professional’s own performance and the care provided. Trauma-informed care supports family-centered integrative, transdisciplinary care, which is vital to the provision of safe, high-quality neonatal care. Carole Kenner, PhD, NNP, RN, FAAN Carol Kuser Loser Dean and Professor School of Nursing, Health, and Exercise Science The College of New Jersey Mary Coughlin’s new book, Trauma-Informed Care in the NICU: Evidence-Based Practice Guidelines for Neonatal Clinicians, draws on the growing evidence regarding the effectiveness of strength-based, individualized, developmentally supportive and relationship-based care delivery in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) setting. Much of this evidence has accumulated over the last three decades due to the international Newborn Individualized Developmental Care and Assessment Program (NIDCAP) research trials, which demonstrate, enduring into school age, improved brain development and overall health and developmental outcomes, as well as enhanced parent competence and lowered stress. Ms. Coughlin’s sensitive and thoughtful work emphasizes the significant trauma that parents and infants, as well as staff, experience in the face of intensive newborn medical care. It will give pause to even the most hardened intensivists, who may attempt to wall off the feelings that come from recognizing the traumatizing events they must .
