Use of baby-carriers for unwell babies in hospital
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Use of baby-carriers for unwell babies in hospital: a qualitative research project seeking opinions from three service-user groups to establish views on the use of baby-carriers in the acute hospital setting.
IRAS ID
231212
Contact name
Sophie Parry Okeden
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Sheffield Childrens NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 4 months, 1 days
Research summary
Skin-to-skin care is a term used to describe babies being placed with their bare chest on their parent’s bare chest. This is commonly practised immediately after birth in the UK and is a national recommendation for the hour following delivery to improve bonding and rates of breastfeeding.
Across the world it is used in newborn baby units and is recommended by the World Health Organisation to improve survival of premature and low birth weight babies. When researchers have looked at lots of studies and put all the results together it has shown that skin-to-skin care with babies in the newborn unit helps steady the baby’s breathing and decreases the amount of oxygen they need compared to babies who don’t have skin-to-skin care. It can also decrease infection rate and in some studies showed an improvement in bonding.
As babies get older it can be more difficult for them to be held and stay still if they are placed on their carer’s chest. This close contact can be facilitated with the use of a baby-carrier.
After a thorough search of the literature we haven’t found any studies looking at using skin-to-skin or close-contact-care for older babies who are admitted to hospital. Consequently we don’t know whether it is something that would be beneficial or not and this is something that we would like to look in to in the future.
To design a study looking at the use of baby-carriers we need input from the parents or carers that will be using the baby-carriers so that we know whether this is something that people would want to do and how they would feel about it. We also need to understand how the staff caring for these babies would feel about caring for a baby in a baby-carrier.
REC name
North West - Greater Manchester East Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/NW/0543
Date of REC Opinion
2 Oct 2017
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion