Eureka! Institutional Repository

The services of Baby Friendly Hospitals are indicators of the quality provided by the health services. The applied practices allow the development of a strong mother-neonatal bonding and set the conditions for exclusive and longer-term breastfeeding. These reasons led to the need to extend the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative to the Neonatal Intensive Care Units. The basic condition for classifying a NICU as Baby Friendly is the possibility of providing Kangaroo Care to hospitalized neonates. Kangaroo Care is defined as the timely, prolonged and continuous skin-to-skin contact between mother/father and the neonate. This multiple case study attempts to investigate the effects of the application of Kangaroo Care on newborns and their parents in the NICU of a Hellenic Hospital in relation to the potential benefits of the method for neonates and parents and the conditions necessary for the application of the method.