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Background In Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs), parent satisfaction and their experiences are fundamental to assess clinical practice and improve the quality of care delivered to infants and parents. Recently, a specific instrument, the EMpowerment of PArents in THe Intensive Care-Neonatology (EMPATHIC-N), has been developed in the Netherlands. This instrument investigated different domains of care in NICUs from a family-centered care perspective. In Italy, no rigorous instruments are available to evaluate parent satisfaction and experiences in NICU with family-centered care. The aim of this study was to translate and validate the EMPATHIC-N instrument into Italian language measuring parent satisfaction. Methods A psychometric study was conducted in nine Italian NICUs. The hospitals were allocated across Italy: four in the North, four in Central region, one in the South. Parents whose infants were discharged from the Units were enrolled. Parents whose infants died were excluded. Results Back-forward translation was conducted. Twelve parents reviewed the instrument to assess the cultural adaptation; none of the items fell below the cut-off of 80% agreement. A total of 186 parents of infants who were discharged from nine NICUs were invited to participate and 162 parents responded and returned the questionnaire (87%). The mean scores of the individual items varied between 4.3 and 5.9. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed and all factor loadings were statistically significant with the exception of item ‘Our cultural background was taken into account’. The items related to overall satisfaction showed a higher trend with mean values of 5.8 and 5.9. The Cronbach’s alpha’s (at domain level 0.73-0.92) and corrected item-total scale correlations revealed high reliability estimates. Conclusions The Italian EMPATHIC-N showed to be a valid and reliable instrument measuring parent satisfaction in NICUs from a family-centered care perspective. Indeed, it had good psychometric properties, validity, and reliability. Furthermore, this instrument is fundamental for further research and internationally benchmarking. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s13052-017-0439-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Background The quality of family-centered care (FCC) in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) is often assessed through Parental satisfaction (PS). Empathic-N, a validated questionnaire to evaluate PS in NICU, was recently developed in the Netherlands [1].To our knowledge similar instruments have not yet been used in Italy. The aim of this project is to translate the 57-item Empathic-N questionnaire and to develop and adapted Italian version for postNICU (Empathic-SN) taking the Italian cultural adaptation into account, and to test their psychometric validity.

Background Medical errors are particularly frequent in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) [1], increasing morbidity and mortality of newborns [2]. This category of patients requires the application of high technology and needs individualized medical prescription mainly based on body weight and gestational age[3]. The most frequent event categories are wrong medication, dose, schedule, or infusion rate; error in administration or method of using a specific treatment; patient misidentification