• Jos M Latour, Johannes B van Goudoever, Beatrix Elink Schuurman, Marcel J I J Albers, Nicolette A M van Dam, Eugenie Dullaart, Marc van Heerde, Carin W M Verlaat, Elise M van Vught, and Jan A Hazelzet.
• Department of Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Intensive Care, Erasmus MC, Sophia Children's Hospital, Room Sp-1539, P.O. Box 2060, 3000, CB, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. j.latour@erasmusmc.nl
• Intensive Care Med. 2011 Feb 1; 37 (2): 319-25.

PurposeTo explore parents' experiences during the admission of their children to a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU).MethodQualitative method using in-depth interviews. Thematic analysis was applied to capture parents' experiences. Thirty-nine mothers and 25 fathers of 41 children admitted to seven of the eight PICUs in university medical centers in The Netherlands were interviewed.ResultsParents were interviewed within 1 month after their child's discharge from a PICU. Thematic analysis identified 1,514 quotations that were coded into 63 subthemes. The subthemes were categorized into six major themes: attitude of the professionals; coordination of care; emotional intensity; information management; environmental factors; parent participation. Most themes had an overarching relationship representing the array of experiences encountered by parents when their child was staying in a PICU. The theme of emotional intensity was in particular associated with all the other themes.ConclusionsThe findings provided a range of themes and subthemes describing the complexity of the parental experiences of a PICU admission. The subthemes present a systematic and thematic basis for the development of a quantitative instrument to measure parental experiences and satisfaction with care. The findings of this study have important clinical implications related to the deeper understanding of parental experiences and improving family-centered care.

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