{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,23]],"date-time":"2026-07-23T06:05:28Z","timestamp":1784786728670,"version":"3.55.0"},"reference-count":30,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,23]],"date-time":"2026-07-23T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1784764800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Pediatr."],"abstract":"\n Objective<\/jats:title>\n To examine the association between discharge teaching quality and caregiving competence among parents of preterm infants at neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) discharge, and to test whether internal locus of control mediates this association.<\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>\n \n Methods<\/jats:title>\n In this cross-sectional study, 409 parents of preterm infants discharged from the NICU of a tertiary hospital in Shandong Province, China, were recruited by convenience sampling between May and October 2025. On the day of discharge, participants completed a demographic questionnaire, the Quality of Discharge Teaching Scale-Parent Version (QDTS-PV), the Internal Locus of Control Scale (ILCS; Levenson IPC subscale I), and the Infant Parenting Inventory (IPI). Pearson correlation analysis was used to examine bivariate associations. Hierarchical multiple regression and PROCESS Model 4 with 5,000 bootstrap samples were used to test the mediating role of internal locus of control.<\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>\n \n Results<\/jats:title>\n \n The average score of caregiving competence was (121.18\u2009\u00b1\u200924.70). Pearson correlation analysis showed that discharge teaching quality and internal locus of control were significantly positively correlated with caregiving competence; discharge teaching quality was significantly positively correlated with internal locus of control (all\n P<\/jats:italic>\n \u2009&lt;\u20090.01). In multivariate linear regression analysis, parental individual factors explained 14.8% of the variance in caregiving competence; adding discharge teaching quality increased the explained variance to 29.2%, and further adding internal locus of control increased it to 31.8%. Mediation analysis showed that discharge teaching quality had both a direct positive association with caregiving competence and an indirect association through internal locus of control. The indirect effect was 0.054 (all\n P<\/jats:italic>\n \u2009&lt;\u20090.001), accounting for 15.0% of the total effect.\n <\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>\n \n Conclusion<\/jats:title>\n Internal locus of control partially mediates the relationship between discharge teaching quality and caregiving competence. These findings suggest that strengthening parents\u2019 internal control beliefs may be an important psychological pathway through which high-quality discharge teaching supports caregiving competence, providing a useful reference for developing targeted discharge education strategies.<\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.3389\/fped.2026.1826901","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,23]],"date-time":"2026-07-23T05:37:19Z","timestamp":1784785039000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Association between discharge teaching quality and caregiving competence among parents of preterm infants at NICU discharge: the mediating role of internal locus of control"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"14","author":[{"given":"Jingjing","family":"Gong","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Linyi People\u2019s Hospital","place":["Linyi, 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