An Innovative Strategy to Improve Family-Infant Bonding

To improve family-infant bonding while newborns were separated from their parents, work began to develop a new Childbirth Center policy to guide staff in using Apple's FaceTime application with patients. Multidisciplinary meetings were held to obtain consent for the use of FaceTime and to protect patient information. We acquired two iPads and the support needed for updates. The staff was educated, and implementation began in January, 2014. This program improved bonding as evidenced by feedback received from the parents who utilized it. Several parents commented on how much they preferred seeing images of their babies in motion breathing and crying instead of just still pictures. Physicians also used FaceTime while talking with parents about plans of care. Since our implementation, we have utilized FaceTime with 46 infants to impact bonding in our Special Care nursery. This process enhances the delivery of relationship-based care with our patients.