Babies have specific needs that assist them in their development and enable to thrive. Feeding is an important aspect of development. In NICU it was found that sick premature babies who were admitted in the hospital had poor sucking and swallowing reflex unlike term babies. It is the responsibility of the nurse to assist the premature babies in their development and to boost their sucking ability. Hence present study intended to assess the effectiveness of non- nutritive sucking in preterm infant and to find the association between the physiological stability and nutritional status in preterm infants with selected socio demographic variables. Self structured interview schedule was constructed to obtain the base line data of preterm infants and their mother and Observational check list to assess the physiological stability and nutritional status in preterm infants. For the present study quasi experimental non equivalent control group design was adopted and non- probability convenient sampling technique was used. The sample taken were 40 preterm infants in that 20 experimental & 20 control group with low birth weight infants between 1.5 - 2.5 kg and less than 37 weeks of gestation admitted in NICU at selected hospital, Bhilai, Chhattisgarh. The ‘t’ test value (6.998) revealed that non- nutritive sucking is effective in physiological stability and nutritional status in preterm infants.
