Objective: To determine levels and correlations among maternal needs, need responses and need response satisfactions and to identify factors influencing maternal needs.
Material and Methods: Purposive sampling was used to select 140 mothers having infants admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of a regional hospital in lower southern Thailand. Mothers were interviewed using four questionnaires: 1) the mother and infant demographic, 2) the maternal needs, 3) the maternal need responses, and 4) the maternal need response satisfaction. Questionnaires 2-4 were tested for content validity and reliability, yielding Cronbach's alpha coefficients of .92, .97, and .97, respectively.
Results: The mean total scores of needs, need responses, and need response satisfaction of the mothers were at a high level. Needs were significantly and positively correlated with need responses (r = .367, p < .01). Need responses were significantly and positively correlated with need response satisfaction (r = .899, p < .01). Income was significantly and positively correlated with maternal needs (r = .179, p < .05) but only 2.2 percent of the variance of maternal needs could be explained by income [(F1,137) = 4.05, p = .046].
Conclusion: To provide effective nursing care to satisfactorily meet the needs of mothers, nurses should always carefully consider the needs of individual mothers, the nurse's response to those needs, need response satisfaction, and influencing factors on maternal needs, especially income.