SPECIAL SESSION: Measuring Family-Centred Care

Description/Overview: Purpose: Family-centered care (FCC) is well known in pediatrics, despite the fact that there is no rigorous evidence about its effectiveness. Recent and rigorous qualitative research demonstrates problems with the implementation of FCC, notably around perceptions of families held by health professionals. Measured attitudes to working with children and working with parents of hospitalised children held by nurses, doctors, allied health and ancillary staff at an Australian children’s hospital, and in two second level hospitals, were compared using a validated questionnaire with two scores, one for working with children, one for working with parents, and demographic characteristics. Method: Using a randomized sample, means of working with children and working with parents scores were compared, using Wilcoxon signed rank test p<0.0001. Mean differences by categories of demographics were estimated using ANOVA and median test compared the median scores. Results: In all places, participants scored working with children significantly more positively than for working with parents. Results were influenced by level of education, whether respondents were parents themselves, if they held senior positions, had worked with children for a long time, and held a pediatric qualification. Conclusion: pediatric health professionals see working with children in a more positive light than working with parents. In FCC the whole family is the unit of care, so if FCC was being implemented effectively, there would be no difference between working with children or their parents. These results show that while most of the research about FCC is qualitative, there are ways of measuring FCC. This supports the increasing body of qualitative research which highlights problems with FCC.