Letter to the Editor
1 Berkeley, CA
Dr Katcher brings up some important issues related to family diversity that were very much on the minds of the parents who drafted "The Principles for Family-Centered Neonatal Care.1 Rather than isolate these issues into separate principles, however, we chose to incorporate them throughout the document.
To address misunderstandings that arise from differences in the backgrounds of parents and staff, we have made a number of proposals including: active encouragement for families to discuss their views with caregivers, full parental access to relevant information, courses in communication for perinatal and neonatal prpfessionals, peer support in the neonatal intensive care unit, and systematic investigation into the issue of how parents with differing needs can best be served by various formats of information.




