The experimental intervention (COPE) was a three-phase educational/behavioral intervention, driven by self-regulation and control theories. Maternal process and outcome variables included: parental beliefs about their critically ill children and role, negative mood state, state anxiety, stress related to the PICU, participation in their children’s care, parental role change, and PTSD symptoms. Child outcomes included measures of child adjustment, including internalizing and externalizing behaviors, and PTSD symptoms.

Findings revealed that mothers in the COPE group, versus mothers in the control group, reported: (a) stronger beliefs regarding their hospitalized children’s responses and their parental role, (b) less stress on the parental stressor scale after transfer to the pediatric unit, (c) less anxiety and negative mood state, including depression, following hospitalization, and (d) fewer PTSD symptoms 12 months following hospitalization. Nurses, blind to study group, also rated the COPE mothers as more involved in their children’s physical and emotional care on the pediatric unit than control mothers. Six and 12-months following discharge from the hospital, children in the COPE group, in comparison to children in the control group, had: (a) fewer behavioral symptoms, (b) fewer externalizing problems, (c) fewer attention problems, (d) less hyperactivity, (e) less aggression, and (f) less depression.

Back to Special Session: Improving the Psychosocial Care and Mental Health/Coping Outcomes of Critically Ill Children and Parents: Evidence to Guide Practice
Back to Evidence-Based Nursing: Strategies for Improving Practice
Sigma Theta Tau International
July 21, 2004