Since 2022, the neonatology service of Vall d’Hebron University Hospital has had individual family rooms, where neonatal patients are admitted and accompanied 24 hours a day by their families. Professionals have observed that, thanks to family participation, the care is approached differently compared to the shared box rooms.

The Spanish Society of Neonatal Nursing (SEEN), which is committed to modernize models in favour of those that are more beneficial, has awarded a grant so that the nursing professionals of the Neonatology Service of Vall d’Hebron University Hospital can demonstrate the benefits of these individual family rooms.

The study will administer questionnaires using the Empathic Scale, a validated comfort assessment scale based on the developmental model of care used in Vall d'Hebron. The families' experiences will then be evaluated both in the individual family rooms and in the conventional shared box rooms.

The ultimate goal of the study is to improve the quality of neonatal care. “With this study, we aim to demonstrate that the current individual family rooms are more beneficial and, therefore, we will contribute to moving away from the conventional shared box model as much as possible,” says Raquel Rodríguez, Nursing Supervisor of the Neonatology Service at Vall d’Hebron.

The study will be carried out by the Multidisciplinary Nursing Research Group at VHIR, which includes the principal investigator Raquel Rodríguez, clinical nurses Xavier García and Lorena Tamborero, along with PhD nurse Patricia Rubio as methodological support for Knowledge Management and Evaluation at Vall d’Hebron University Hospital.