Understanding infant stress in intensive care

Understanding Infant Stress in Intensive Care

Critically ill infants who spend their first days in intensive care units such as the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), or cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) face numerous overlapping stressors. These stressors can significantly affect their long-term neurodevelopment and overall well-being.

Common Stressors Across Intensive Care Units

A comprehensive review of peer-reviewed research identified several common categories of stressors present in all intensive care settings, drawing particularly from data in NICU and PICU environments. These stressors include physical, environmental, and procedural factors that challenge the fragile health of infants.

Gaps in Research on Cardiac Intensive Care

Despite the extensive research on NICU and PICU infants, nurse-researchers did not find studies specifically addressing the added difficulties faced by infants with congenital heart disease admitted to the CICU.

Study by Children's National Hospital

The study, led by Christine Riley, PhD, RN, APRN, a nurse practitioner in the CICU at Children’s National Hospital, highlights the critical need to understand these stressors. It stresses the importance of strategies to mitigate their effects to give every infant the best chance to thrive during and after their intensive care stay.

"This study reiterates the importance of understanding these stressors, how they impact already fragile newborns, and how best to mitigate them to give every infant their best chance to thrive during and after an intensive care unit stay."
— Christine Riley, PhD, RN, APRN

Author’s Summary

Intensive care environments expose critically ill infants to multiple stressors that can affect their development, highlighting a need for targeted research and care strategies, especially for those in cardiac units.

Children's National Hospital — 2025-11-05