» Nursing news archive 2003

Simmons Educates Nurses to Help New Parents

Associate Dean for Nursing Programs Judy Beal and Professor Patricia Rissmiller, associate professor and director of the SHS's parent-child health graduate nursing program, recently hosted an Infant Behavior Institute at Simmons. Made possible through a grant from the Health and Human Services Maternal Child Health Division, the two-day workshop brought together community health nurses from Massachusetts and Maine who work with high-risk infants and parents.

According to Beal, teaching parents how to interpret and respond to their own infant's behavior has not yet become a routine part of nursing practice--especially in hospitals-- in spite of a large and growing body of knowledge and research about infant behavior. The institute is the only program in New England specifically targeted to community health nurses.

The program--which included a keynote speech by Dr. T. Berry Brazleton, well known for his many books on parenting--taught nurses how to better help parents understand their newborn's behavior. In March, there will be a one-day advanced training follow-up seminar, addressing additional strategies for using infant assessment techniques, specific parent-newborn cases, and the results of a parent survey.

Beal and Rissmiller theorize that by enhancing parental knowledge of growth and development, sharpening observation skills, and enhancing understanding of infant behavior, parents will respond more appropriately to the cues of their newborns.

"Our belief is that having nurses work with parents will, in the long-term, enhance positive parent-infant interaction," said Beal."Research has shown that home visits by trained nurses during the first two years of life significantly reduced the rates of child abuse and neglect."

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