I am a nursing student and I need to know what you think of the changes as far as the social side from the past to the present, how do you think people are treated differently, both the babies and the family.

I thought you were inviting us out for drinks! :chuckle
I would guess that parents are more involved than before. Most units will let parents in 24/7 and encourage things like Kangaroo care and changing the babies diaper. Some units also have parent overnight rooms where a parent can stay and care for or breast feed their baby.
I also imagine that social work is more involved in d/c planning, parents needs, baby's needs, than before.

Try checking out Neonatology on the web, they have an awesome historical section that goes back to the 1800's. It is interesting that at one time premature babies were put in incubators and traveled in sideshows and also at one time mothers were not allowed any where near them and only allowed to view them for a short time every day through a window.
http://www.neonatology.org/neo.diversions.html

There have been great strides I believe to involve the family as a unit ASAP. We give tour of the NICU to high risk mom's by video camera, and the docs are much more up front with the family I believe.

Visits are 27/7 for parents, and they may choose who they want to visit with them now....no more cover gowns. Kangaroo Care is our norm....and we have routine parent & sibling classes. We have primary nursing, which can help the long termers.

We encourage care conferances....but most of the time meetings are at the bedside. It seems we do better with care conferances if the family doesn't speak english.

We seem to be moving foreword...still could do better...the parent evals help.

We actually have all private rooms in our NICU, so parents can be at the bedside 24/7 and sleep there if they want to. for the most part it works out well. Also I think in the past few years there has been more empphasis on the developmental care side of NICU nursing. Cindy