Abstract

The presentation, which will be followed by a workshop, will address how to maintain a psychic bond with an ill or premature infant, and will be part of a general presentation given by Jeanne Magagna entitled Community of Concern: Updates on needs of infants in the NICU Unit.
I shall reflect upon my experience as a doctor working in a neonatal intensive care unit with an infant and the infant’s anxious parents еarly in my medical career. I aim to demonstrate how a better understanding of the emotional impact that premature and ill infants and their anxious parents have on the healthcare staff working with them can help in providing the necessary support  to the staff and prevent professional burnout. This in turn can support the quality of care that staff are able to give to the infants and also help them in supporting the infant’s parents.
I shall talk about fostering the staff, parents and other relatives to bear their anxieties and stay connected with their own intense feelings through having opportunities to work together, creating a community of concern in the NICU.
Different ways of relating to feelings of staff and parents and the infant through convex, flat and concave containment will be elaborated upon.
In the workshop following the presentation I will discuss the possible impacts of the experience of premature birth and being in the NICU on the child’s inner world, which are later revealed in the psychotherapist’s office.