Running Head: EXPLORING PRIMARY RESEARCH ON PRETERM BIRTH
Exploring Primary Research on Preterm Birth
Lindsey M. Gamrat
Indiana University
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EXPLORING PRIMARY RESEARCH ON PRETERM BIRTH
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The ability to locate scholarly research articles relating to a specific topic is a vital skill to
have for a BSN student. Having a bachelor’s of science in nursing gives a nurse more education
on abstract ideas, such as ethics, as well as knowledge and the ability to research. Research is
also a key component for a nurse who would like to continue his or her education to attain a
masters or doctorate, as many students in the Indiana University School of Nursing have the
desire to do.
At the start of her nursing school career, the author was required to select a topic that she
would like to conduct evidence based research on. This topic would follow her for the rest of her
educational career, so it was important that she selected a topic that deeply interested her. The
author has always had an interest in pregnancy and birth, so she knew she wanted to select
something related to this. When the author was 10 years old, she had a baby sister born
prematurely who had to spend time in a neonatal intensive care unit. The author was very
fascinated by the miracle of watching her sister grow from a tiny preemie who could not breathe
on her own into a healthy baby girl. Ever since, the author has been very passionate about
premature birth and felt that helping other babies like her sister was her calling in life. She is an
officer for the IU Collegiate Council for March of Dimes and hopes to one day work in a NICU.
This interest in the field drove her to select a topic where she could begin learning and
researching preterm birth. The author selected the topic of “antepartum” in the labor and delivery
category because this period “before birth” includes preterm deliveries.
The author feels that her topic is an area that definitely needs a lot of research. One out of
every eight babies in the United States is born too soon. Every year, 13 million babies worldwide
are born prematurely (March of Dimes, 2011). This is a staggering percentage and for many of
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these preterm births, the cause is unknown. The author feels a sense of urgency for research in
this area to help prevent preterm births and save the lives of many newborns that die or have
serious consequences from being born too early.
As the author began researching the topic of preterm birth, she found a variety of
subtopics that interested her. After looking around on the internet and exploring some of the
articles that were out there on preterm birth, the author decided to formulate a question using the
PICO format. She wanted to research the psychological effects of mothers who gave birth to
premature babies. The author formulated her question: “In mothers of newborns, how does
preterm birth affect the mother’s psychological well-being as compared to full term birth?” This
question includes the patient population (mothers of newborns), issue of interest (preterm birth),
comparison (full term birth), and outcome (psychological effects.)
When beginning to research her question, the author decided to use CINAHL as her
primary search engine, because CINAHL is the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health
Literature. She believed that this engine would be the most comprehensive resource for articles
related to health issues. The author had a fairly easy time using CINAHL by searching for key
terms so as “preterm birth” and “psychological.” The most difficult part was that many of the
articles did not have full text versions available. The author was forced to alter her search criteria
and PICO question. At first, she wanted to explore the psychological effects of bed rest on high
risk expectant mothers, but during her search process, she decided to alter her original question
due to lack of resources and because she found an article that she really liked that fit a different
category.
When selecting an article, the author developed certain inclusion and exclusion criteria.
She would first read the title to see if it sounded like a relevant article to her topic and then she
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would read the abstract to verify its relevance. Another important criterion was to make sure that
a full text version was available to her. After an article fit her criteria thus far, she would then
open the full text version and skim the article to the results and discussion section. She looked
for results that pertained to her question of interest. If the article still looked promising, she
would read through it and think about how she could use it for her assignment. When searching
for articles, the author did not select any that contained an excess of terminology that she was not
yet familiar with. She also was looking for an article that was fairly broad. With this assignment
just beginning her research on the topic, she was not very educated on it so far. She did not want
to get into anything too specific or too complex for her first assignment. She also was required to
select a primary research article, so another criterion was that the author of the article had to have
conducted the study themselves to make their work count as a primary source. The author spent
at least an hour reading through numerous articles and adjusting her search criteria. Finally, the
author came across an article that met all of her inclusion criteria and was interesting to her. She
wanted it to be an article that she found interesting to read because that would make the
assignment easier for her; so she selected this particular article for the assignment.
The article that that author selected was entitled “Mothers’ experiences of interacting
with their premature infants.” It was written by a group from the University of Nottingham who
had conducted a study on mothers of babies born preterm. They interviewed 20 mothers with the
median gestational age at birth being 27 weeks. The median amount of time the newborns spent
in the hospital was 78 days. The interviewees were asked about various interactions such as those
with the hospital staff, with their infants, and their feelings towards those interactions. The
researchers found that the mothers felt anxious, insecure, and unprepared to care for their infants.
They felt helpless at the hospital and were fearful of holding and interacting with their babies.
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Upon going home, when the safety net of the nurses caring for their babies was gone, the
mothers felt overwhelmed and incompetent. Not only is this lack of meaningful mother-baby
interaction taxing on the mom, it can also be detrimental to the infant. While even though some
mothers reported encouragement by hospital staff to interact with their babies, they still felt very
disconnected and apprehensive to do so. The research fortunately found though that over time,
interactions between mom and baby did improve (M. Nicolaou et al., 2009).
The implications of these findings for the author are that as a nurse, she will want to
monitor the psychological status of the mother closely, especially in high risk situations such as
with preterm birth. She will also want to encourage mother-baby interactions for the benefit of
both parties involved and make the mothers feel more comfortable and less apprehensive if
possible. The author looks forward to continuing her research on the subject.
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Resources
March of Dimes. (2011, August 25).Prematurity campaign. Retrieved from
http://www.marchofdimes.com/mission/prematurity.html
M. Nicolaou et al. (2009, May).Mothers’ experiences of interacting with their premature infants.
Retrieved from
http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lib.indiana.edu/ehost/detail?vid=3&hid=18&sid=0fef7
270-2871-480e-b96c6ea245cc311d@sessionmgr15&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ==