Intensive care nursing
-
Intensive care nursing · Sep 1989
ReviewParents of critically ill children have their needs too! A literature review.
Children are very special people in the lives of their parents. Much of the life of the parents is concerned with meeting the needs of the children, giving them nurturance, love, protection and support. A child's parents will be the dominant factor in providing that environment in which the child develops and comes to understand his/her self, role in the family unit and relationship with the world at large. ⋯ This unique influence and understanding implicit in the parental role has important implications for health care workers, for in their care of hospitalised children the involvement and co-operation of the parents is essential if adverse reactions to hospitalisation are to be minimised. However the parents will only be able to assist the health care team to meet the needs of the child if their own needs are also acknowledged and satisfied. With this in mind this review of the literature will focus upon the needs of parents whose children have been admitted into a Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
-
Intensive care nursing · Sep 1989
Nurse's accounts of nursing the terminally ill on a coronary care unit.
This paper is based on nurses' reported experiences about nursing people dying in a coronary care unit, and their attitudes towards such work. Two patterns of dying associated with cardiac arrest and cardiac failure were typical in the unit, each with its difficulties and problems. ⋯ Elements within the unit's ethos and organisation associated with this positive coping were the high staff-patient ratio, low staff turnover, good and supportive relationships among staff, and the policy of open and honest communication about prognosis. Of particular importance was the feeling that everything that it was possible to have done for the patient had been done.