Paper
Friday, July 23, 2004
10:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Friday, July 23, 2004
3:00 PM - 3:30 PM
The Child and Hospital -- Elements of Quality in Drawings
Tiina Pelander, RN, MNSc, Department of Nursing Science, Turku University, Turku, Turku, Finland, Kimmo Lehtonen, PhD, Department of Education, Turku University, Turku, Turku, Finland, and Helena Leino-Kilpi, RN, PhD, Department of Nursing, University of Turku, Turku, Finland.
Objective of the study: To describe elements of quality in children’s drawings about the ideal hospital. The ultimate goal will be used the results to construct a measure for evaluating the quality of pediatric nursing care from children’s perspective. Background: The patients’ perspective has figured more centrally in definitions and evaluations of nursing care since 1990s. However, there is lack of studies about the quality of pediatric care from children’s perspective. Usually parents have been evaluated the quality of care, not children. Method: The data were collected using children’s drawings. Sample and Setting: The 35 drawings were collected from 4 to 11 years old children during their hospitalization in one university hospital in Finland. Nineteen of children had insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) and 16 of children were treated on the surgical ward. Analysis: Using content analysis, the drawings were coded. Findings: Two main categories of the results were the environment and the people of the ideal hospital. In the drawings the environment was emphasized concerned the hospital building, its environment and the patient rooms where were drawn many entertainment activities like TV, videos, toys, animals and functional playgrounds. There were only a few patients, parents and nurses in the drawings. All the nurses smiled, had colorful uniforms and made different physical nursing activities. The parents also smiled and usually stood behind or round the child, who was the patient. Conclusions: The results demonstrated that children are capable of offering valuable insights into the elements of quality by using drawing. The method is useful in relation with children whose verbal ability is limited. The drawings revealed only some elements of quality and emphasis the physical environment while the roles of parents were not so dominating. However, the results could be used to construct the quality measurement instrument for children.
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