| Learning Objective #1: Describe the process that parents experience while their child is hospitalized with a critical illness | |||
| Learning Objective #2: Identify things that helped and hindered parents' ability to cope with the child's critical illness |
Objective: To identify what it is like for a parent to experience the critical illness of their child.
Design: Grounded Theory, qualitative design.
Sample: Thirty-seven participants (29 mothers, 8 fathers) from a population of parents whose children have congenital heart disease and have experienced a stay in a Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit.
Method: Interviews were conducted using a semi-structured format. The grounded theory methodology enabled data to be collected and analyzed simultaneously using the constant comparison method as described by Glaser and Strauss (1967).
Findings: The experience of being a parent whose child has a critical illness is a process that involves complex emotions and behaviors. The process begins with the child’s admission and includes initial reactions such as shock and lack of understanding. During the child's admission the parents have a continual need for information and education, are required to make changes in their parental role, face difficulties related to decision making and repeatedly experience the agony of waiting for procedures to be completed. Overriding the entire experience is the uncertainty surrounding the child's long term outcome. The process concludes with personal growth that the parents reported as a consequence of their experiences. Parents also identified things that helped and hindered their ability to cope with their child’s illness.
Conclusions: The experience of having your child suffer a critical illness is an agonizing and complex one for parents. The information obtained in this study provides beginning insight into the needs and experiences of parents who have watched their children suffer with a critical illness.
Implications: The information from this study can be used to design interventions to enhance the support provided to parents. Further research needs to include parents from more diverse ethnic backgrounds and whose children died during their ICU stay.
Back to Critically Ill Child
Back to 14th International Nursing Research Congress
Sigma Theta Tau International
10-12 July 2003