[The amazing neonate]

According to a questionnaire including 78 general practitioners, specialists in pediatrics and obstetrics, physicians specializing pediatrics and obstetrics, and 43 students of a High Nursing School, 21.8% of physicians and 58% of nurses think that the newborn does not see, 17.9% of physicians and 18.6% of nurses think that the newborn does not hear, and 44.9% of physicians and 79.1% of nurses think that the newborn has no feeling of the position of the body in space and of its movements. The existence of the sense of smell in the newborn is denied by 66.7% of physicians and 55.8% of nurses, and of the sense of taste by 44.9% of physicians and 41.9% of nurses. All the nurses know that the newborn has the sense of touch, while 3.8% of physicians think the opposite. Two thirds of those included in the questionnaire think that the newborn can memorize and the three quarters of them think it can learn. Much fewer nurses than physicians (32.4%:61%) consider the newborn a passive receiver of external stimuli. As many as 97% of physicians think that an early stimulation of the newborn helps its psychomotor development and a high percentage of them positively assess the majority of measures implementing it. Yet, only 66.7% of physicians consider it necessary for parents to be near the hospitalized premature infant, while 24.4% of all the questioned do not consider the prevention of the birth of undesirable children a measure by which the quality of the parent-child relation could be influenced.