The Developmentally Supportive Care: Newborn Individualized Developmental Care and Assessment Program (NIDCAP) offers an individualized and nurturing approach to the care of infants in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). To enhance understanding of an infant’s special needs, NIDCAP provides a structured method of observing and assessing infant behavior. Many studies have shown that babies in an NICU often experience sensory overload from high noise levels, constant lighting, frequent medical interventions, and regular handling. The NIDCAP program attempts to overcome this problem. Observational sessions are conducted weekly by a developmental specialist who focuses on the individual “language” infants use to communicate their needs and their response to the surrounding environment. Based on these observations, as well as notes on caregiver interactions and information on the infant’s physical condition and health, the infant’s family and caregiving team develop and implement an appropriate plan for interacting with and caring for each infant. The infant is placed in an area with low lighting, little noise, and infrequent interruptions.

The goal of NIDCAP is to maximize physical, mental, and emotional growth, health, and other positive outcomes for infants in NICUs.

Several controlled experiments, including two with reasonable sample sizes (40 very-low-birth-weight babies in one group and 255 low-birth-weight babies in another), have shown the program to be effective at improving outcomes for low- and very-low-birth-weight babies. The program has been shown to be effective in various sites throughout the country and several studies indicated that low- and very-low-birth-weight babies who participated in NIDCAP showed gains similar to those of full-term babies. Infants in NIDCAP have shorter stays on respirators, start oral feeding sooner, have better average daily weight gains, and shorter hospital stays when compared to a regular care group. Hospital costs are lower for infants in the NIDCAP group when compared to regular care NICU infants.