Bridging the NICU to Home: Part 3 The Parent Experience in the NICU

This education is about:

• The parent experience of NICU admission, shared first-person by a NICU parent advocate in conversation with a NICU discharge coordinator
• How acute stress affects what parents can absorb
• Family-integrated care and the shift from parent as visitor to parent as member of the care team
• Recognizing emotional readiness for education and how educational strategies should evolve over the course of the NICU stay  
• Building parents' advocacy skills before discharge to support follow-up and care coordination at home

Why it matters:

Parents of NICU infants must learn complex care skills while under acute stress, then advocate for their child across multiple providers after discharge. Clinicians who calibrate education to emotional readiness, integrate parents into the care team, and build advocacy skills before discharge set families up for safer transitions home.

What you will learn:

NICU nurse and discharge coordinator Heidi Gates sits down with Molly Fraust-Wylie, a NICU parent and family program manager, for a candid conversation about the experience of delivering a preterm infant and learning how to advocate for your infant at the same time. Ms. Fraust-Wylie describes the stress of the first days of admission, the importance of feeling like part of the care team, and the clinician interactions that shaped her experiences. Ms. Gates shares how staff can gauge family readiness for education, hand off caregiving responsibilities under family-integrated care, and teach parents to advocate for their infants. Through this discussion-based format, learners gain concrete strategies for supporting parents throughout the NICU stay.

Faculty

• Profile

  Molly Fraust-Wylie, MA

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  Molly Fraust-Wylie, MA is the NICU Family Program Manager at the Klarmarn Family NICU at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. After her own NICU experience with her first son, Max, Molly left her career in Marketing to become a parent advocate and educator on the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Molly offers a unique parent voice on multidisciplinary teams with the aim of improving the overall experience for families with infants in the hospital. From developing materials and running educational programming on the unit to bedside support and community organizing with NICU graduate families, Molly’s focus is on involving and empowering parents in all aspects of the NICU experience. Molly holds an MA from Emerson College in Integrated Marketing Communication and is a graduate of Dickinson College. Molly sits on the Board of Directors for Project Sweet Peas, a national nonprofit that supports families of premature or sick infants and those who have been affected by pregnancy and infant loss.

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  Molly Fraust-Wylie, MA

  PNQIN Patient & Family Engagement 
  NICU Family Program Manager
  Klarman Family NICU
  Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
  Lynnfield, Massachusetts

• Profile

  Heidi Gates, RN

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  Heidi Gates is a CN IV (Clinical Nurse IV) at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where she is involved in advanced nursing practices and patient care. Her professional background includes various roles in healthcare, emphasizing her expertise in clinical settings.

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  Heidi Gates, RN

  CN IV
  Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
  Lynnfield, Massachusetts