For my senior year in Honors, I am researching the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) as my capstone project and looking into ethical dilemmas, media influences, and the effect of art on families in the NICU. My goal is to develop my understanding of this field so that I can pursue an internship in a NICU for my May Project when I hope to shadow either in an emergency room or a NICU. I want to experience life inside of a hospital before I go to college to major in nursing. 

I discovered in my research various ethical dilemmas involved in NICU care. Choices about preterm infants cannot be made with great certainty, and health professionals have to balance the infant’s best interest, parental wishes, and medical opinions. The reason that a good ethical choice cannot be made with complete certainty is because of the unpredictable outcomes of the preterm infant. It is hard to know the survival rate for babies born at 23 to 28 weeks gestation because it varies greatly from one baby to another, so it is difficult for medical data to transfer between individual cases. Additionally, sometimes the medical staff and the parents disagree about what is best for the baby. Since the infant cannot make its own choices, it is under the parents’ legal care, but sometimes the parents’ choices can be influenced by other aspects of the stressful NICU experience. Medical professionals in the NICU face many challenges when dealing with patients and families in the NICU. As a nurse, they have to be prepared for anything that could happen to the patient, while also dealing with the families who do not have the medical background to make the best decision possible. 

Another subtopic that appeared in my research is the media’s influences on the NICU experience. Media coverage plays a powerful role in shaping how the public understands and emotionally responds to the survival of preterm infants. When a family has to spend unexpected time in the NICU, positive media can affect a family’s mindset. When they consume media that focus on success stories and “miracle baby” points of view, they often believe that good outcomes are common, when in reality it is much more complicated. However, this positive media helps parents feel more at ease in the NICU when the medical team is helping them because it helps them maintain hope. 

Finally, I looked at the effect of art on families in the NICU. Researchers have discovered that art plays a vital role in the emotional and psychological healing of patients and families within the hospital, especially in the NICU. Art offers comfort, connection, and reflection for patients and families during stressful times. Art can help parents cope with stress in the NICU because it gives them something to look at to take their mind off of what is happening. The author also says that art is often designed with sensitivity and that the art curators in hospitals pick the pieces intentionally. One art curator for a hospital NICU, for example, chooses artwork for the NICU as she would for a nursery. The goal is to create a feeling of home in the hospital while families endure the trials and tribulations of the NICU which affect parents’ mental state. Art in the NICU can help parents realize that the NICU isn't necessarily a bad place, but a place that will try to help their baby in the most humane and supportive way possible. 

Next semester, I will continue my research into the NICU experience, and I’ll shadow in person at a local hospital. I am communicating with a NICU Nurse Practitioner and with an ER doctor to arrange shadow experiences that will give me a sense of what working in a stressful hospital environment is like. I also want to make connections in the field so that when I return after college, I can utilize those connections to advance my profession and help my future patients.