Staff and parents are discriminators for outcomes in neonatal intensive care units.

Aim: We investigated the associations between staff work characteristics, parents' experiences and a number of medical outcome measures.

Methods: This explorative multicentre study took place in the neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) of five German university hospitals between 2009 and 2011. We assessed staff work characteristics by surveying 126 NICU nurses and 57 physicians and asked 214 parents about their relationships with staff.