Review of parent and healthcare provider experiences based on approach to managing Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal Syndrome (NOWS)

Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal Syndrome (NOWS) is a group of clinical withdrawal signs occurring in prenatally opioid-exposed newborns and manifesting as neurobehavioral dysregulation, including extreme irritability such as excessive crying, rigid muscle tone, and difficulty feeding and sleeping. One U.S. infant experiencing NOWS is born every 25 min. Clinical management of these infants has traditionally occurred in the high-acuity environment of a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), which contributes to separation of infants from their parents and increases the likelihood of pharmacological intervention to manage withdrawal. Over the past decade, more holistic approaches, such as the Eat, Sleep, and Console method, have focused on parents’ active participation in care, rooming-in, and implementation of non-pharmacologic soothing techniques to reduce medication use, hospital length of stay, and healthcare expenditures. These distinctly different management approaches have contributed to unique experiences for parents and healthcare providers involved in infants’ care; therefore, the purpose of this paper is to review the experiences of parents and healthcare providers as they relate to management approaches for infants with NOWS.