The impact of a three-phase education–support–follow-up program on the mothers' perceptions of the needs of their multiple infants: A protocol study for a clinical trial

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Infertility, a problematic issue to the newly married couples, should be treated as no couple should be deprived of having children. The treatment, however, poses new challenges to the multiples and subsequent preterm births, health system, and families. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the effect of an education–support–follow-up program on the mothers’ perceptions of their multiples’ needs. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This research is a three-phase interventional study. The first phase develops an educational program through review of the literature and using the opinions of experts. In the second phase, the developed program will be implemented in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for the mothers of multiples. In the third phase, based on the developed plan, the required support will be applied and followed up. The data collection tool is a researcher-made questionnaire which is completed by the mothers ( N = 30) before and after the intervention. Convenience sampling method will be used, and the mothers will be allocated randomly. Data gathering started from September 2020 and would continue until the sample collection is completed. Data will be analyzed through the descriptive and analytical statistics with Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21. RESULTS: The present study can address the needs of the multiple infants based on the implementation of an education–support–follow-up program for mothers and their families. CONCLUSION: The mothers of multiple infants are required to specify unique physical and developmental needs of their infants, while their perceptions of these needs may be different based on the education–support–follow-up program. The researchers designed the program to help them define highly specialized needs of multiples and also examined their perceptions of these needs.