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nursing and parental role, and a growing awareness of ethical issues and challenges communicating sensitive information with parents and professional standards. For parents these changes included a growing sense of wanting more participation in their infants’ care through information sharing about their baby’s condition, practical advice around baby care, a growing awareness of ward practices which affect their engagement and satisfaction with care, and an increase in positive feedback for nurses. These results provide insight into the culture of neonatal nursing in one unit in central Vietnam, and its continuing practice changes following an educational intervention. For nursing staff, a growing sense of professional identity can be seen through their increased confidence to interact with the medical team, their support of parents, and their pride in the care they provide and the unit in which they work. Whilst a growing number of nurses reported that parents should support them in their work, this could reflect an increase in awareness of the extent of their nursing role in developmental care, pain management, and symptom recognition and management. It may also be reflective of a growing belief in the ability of parents to provide care for their own infant during admission. For parents, the gradual increase in wanting more involvement in their infant’s care may reflect the nurses’ perceived expanding role. Parents wanting and potentially gaining more involvement in their infants’ care could promote awareness of practicalities which hinder their ability to do so. The difficulties in communication with parents that nurses reported is consistent with the parental responses that they gain most of the information about their baby’s condition from the doctors along with the decrease in reported information sharing and updates. An area for future training may therefore include communication skills training for nurses on how to communicate effectively with parents, thereby improving both nursing and parental experience. Very few studies have performed qualitative research in this area; however one study in particular carried out qualitative interviews with 198 parents of infants who were hospitalised within the first month of life in Cambodia, Malaysia, Laos and Vietnam, and explored perceived barriers to newborn care [21]. Results highlighted that parents had low levels of satisfaction with their neonatal experiences, with parents from one unit in Hanoi, Vietnam, specifically (n = 48) citing issues such as availability of medications, privacy, cleanliness and staff demeanour as areas which negatively impacted their experience. A small number of parents in our study highlighted hygiene as an issue affecting their satisfaction, although this was often directed towards other parents on the unit rather than the unit Table 7 Parent interview analysis theme 3 and subthemes: personal experiences Theme (subtheme) T1 T2 T3 Personal experiences: Positive experiences “I don’t have anything ask more and nothing to complain” (P21) “The neonatal unit met the best necessary conditions for my child’s recovery and comply with hygienic regulations. I am really satisfied when being treated here” (P16) “The quality of service is very good, so I want all babies are treated here” (P14) Practical challenges “I think the nurses should go to check me and the baby more often long time no nurse come to me” (P3) “I think there should be a second person in the room to help the mom taking care of her baby” (P15) “I would like to consult with doctors about his situation much more but I have no opportunity to do it” (P8) Changes for future parents “They should be more clean many parents dirty and use mobile phone and noise the doors” (P10) “Some parents close or open the door so hard that make the babies wake up and annoy the others It would be better if there is a sliding door” (P2) “The mothers should have a wash before contacting with their babies” (P8) Gallagher et al. BMC Pediatrics (2017) 17:161 Page 8 of 11 itself. The positive appraisal of staff in our own study is in contrast with the results from Martinez et al. This could be attributed to limitations in that the infants of the parents interviewed were still inpatients in our
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