Children's health care : journal of the Association for the Care of Children's Health
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This study investigated parents' and health care providers' perspectives of their communicative interactions when a seriously ill infant is treated in an intensive care nursery. Both parents and health care providers stressed the importance of keeping parents informed of their child's condition. Concerns regarding the provision of medical information to parents in an understandable manner, the lack of time health care providers have to spend interacting with parents, and the possibility that parents' emotional involvement interferes with their understanding of the child's condition were raised. Implications for pediatric health care providers relative to their interactions with parents of young chronically ill children are raised.
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The purpose of this study was to examine the levels of anxiety of mothers with children in pediatric intensive care units with different types of visitation policies, both structural and individualized. Forty subjects were obtained from two children's hospitals. ⋯ Data showed that mothers who experiences individualized visitation had significantly lower anxiety scores (p less than .005) than mothers who experiences structured visitation. Findings also revealed that mothers viewed their child's illness as less severe when individualized visitation was permitted as opposed to structured visitation.
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Although the term thanatology was coined in 1912, the study of death and dying in childhood was out of fashion until the 1970s. The pendulum then swung, and there was a shift from avoidance of the issue to its becoming almost a fad. During the past 10 years, successful research of previously fatal malignancies and more careful and complex studies of children's and parents' reactions to serious illness have given the opportunity to provide wiser care for these patients and their families.
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The purpose of this study was to identify staff behaviors and parental coping patterns helpful to parents during their child's hospitalization in a pediatric intensive care unit. Subjects were 21 mothers and 15 fathers of 27 hospitalized children. ⋯ The staff behavior seen as most important by the largest number of parents was "being permitted to stay with their child as much as possible." In evaluating the overall findings regarding personal coping strategies, it appears that parents most frequently used problem-focused coping strategies and that these strategies were seen as most helpful. Emotion-focused coping was used by a slightly lower percentage of parents than the other categories.
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The activist roles that parents play in the establishment and function of child life programs are presented. Five areas of parental activism are identified and discussed, including creation of a child life program, contributions to child life, protest activities, education of child life workers, and emotional support and role validation of workers. The barriers to effective activism are explored as they exist in the parent, the child life worker, and the institution. The summary includes suggestions to facilitate parental activism.