Effectiveness of Cope Creating Opportunities for Parent Empowerment on Stress and Coping Ability of Mothers of Preterm Admitted in Nicu

Abstract

Preterm birth is an important perinatal health problem across the globe. Births of preterm babies are crisis for the family. Parents have not expected that the infants may born with premature and they experience multiple stressor related to feelings of helplessness,feelings of isolation, uncertainty, fear, anxiety, guilt, and lack of sufficient knowledge on parenting their infants. When stress in mothers is high they tend to cope negatively that leads to poor confident and coping ability to care their premature baby. The research design used for this study was pretest posttest control groupdesign. Purposive sampling technique was used.The sample consisted of 220 post natal mothers of preterm admitted in the NICU of PPK and Rethna hospital at Kanyakumari District. Pretest was conducted on 2nd postnatal day and structured COPE was given to the mothers on the same day through video teaching using Lap top. Post test was conducted on 4th and 6thpost natal period using the same toolResult: The mothers of preterm in experimental group had significant reduction in their stress level compare with control group. The mean reduction of stress between pre test to post test-2 in experimental group was 45.0± 6.5. Whereas the meanreduction of stress between pre test to post test-2 in control group was 16.0 ± 5.8. The mothers of preterm in experimental group had significant improvement in their coping ability compare with control group. The improvement in mean level of coping from pre test to post test-2 in experimental group was 23.8± 4.4. Whereas the mean coping improvement frompre test to post test-2 in control group was 9.0± 4.4. It was very high when compare with the control group. Thus the study concluded that COPE is an effective intervention in reducing the stress and increasing coping ability of mothers of preterm.