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Introduction
We will closely follow around 20 families across 2 Neonatal Intensive Care Units, in order to develop an in-depth understanding of parents' experiences. This will involve talking to parents about their experiences, audio recording all formal conversations with health care professionals and exploring and analysing baby's notes.
HCP Involvement
The research will involve audio recording all formal conversations between health care professionals and parents. Conversation analysis will be used to explore how different conversational practices work and unfold, in order to understand how parents make difficult decisions. The conversations will be stored confidentially and no identifying information will be made available in any potential dissemination. The aim is to exemplify good practice so that this can be used to support nationwide training.
Access to recordings
The neonatologists involved in the study will have access to their individual recordings via a secure password protected network. A copy will also be made available to parents, as there is evidence that parents find these recordings helpful for information recall and relate to higher levels of satisfaction with their baby's care (Koh et al. 2007). The overall findings will be used to develop a training package for trainee neonatologists in delivering bad news and shared decision making with parents.
The study will be conducted with minimal interruption to the neonatal unit. The research team will work with individual teams to determine the best way of organising the recordings.