Design and setting
This study was a randomized clinical trial with a parallel, pre-, and post-intervention design in which two methods of KC were evaluated in a single study. The study population consisted of the mothers or maternal grandmothers of all the preterm newborns who were admitted to the neonatal or NICU wards at Imam Khomeini Hospital in Kuhdasht, which is one of the hospitals affiliated with Lorestan University of Medical Sciences in Iran. The neonatal ward of this hospital has 6 incubators, and its NICU ward has 4 beds. In the year 2020, more than 250 newborns were admitted, of which 90 were premature neonates. Sometimes, due to the lack of beds and the desire of the parents, premature newborns are transferred to the hospitals in the center of the province.