Mothers' involvement in assessing feeding skills of premature infants

Among the problems faced by premature infants after birth are weakness in oral-motor skills and an inability to achieve oral feeding independence. The Early Feeding Skills (EFS) Assessment is a tool for identifying infant's feeding ability level and determining the levels at which an infant requires support for safe and efficient feeding. Given the effective role of mothers and their involvement in taking care of premature infants and the importance of examining the psychometric properties of tools used for assessing infant's feeding, this study aimed at evaluating inter-rater reliability (between mother and rater) using the EFS Instrument.

This is a cross-sectional study. Participants in this study included 30 mothers with premature infants admitted to the NICU ward of Imam Khomeini Hospital in Ahvaz, Iran. To evaluate the inter-rater reliability of the "Early Feeding Skills (EFS) Assessment Instrument", feeding skills of the infants were evaluated by the mother and a rater. Statistical analysis was carried out using Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICC) in SPSS software (Ver. 22).

The inter-rater reliability of the total score for each section of the EFS Instrument was good (ICC >0.75). ICC values for inter-rater agreement in assessing Oral Feeding Readiness, Ability to Maintain Engagement in Feeding, Ability to Organize Oral-Motor Functioning, Ability to Coordinate Swallowing, Ability to Maintain Physiologic Stability, and Oral Feeding Recovery were 0.87, 0.94, 0.91, 0.85, 0.95 and, 0.80, respectively.

If mothers are appropriately trained on the EFS assessment, they can actively participate with the health care professionals providing care to their children. Furthermore, remote participation is possible. The findings of this study revealed significant inter-rater reliability.