AACN clinical issues in critical care nursing
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AACN Clin Issues Crit Care Nurs · May 1991
ReviewParent stress associated with pediatric critical care nursing: linking research and practice.
This paper connects research findings to nursing practices that may be helpful when working with stressed parents of critically ill children. Theories and concepts foundational to understanding parental stress related to pediatric critical care are reviewed. Research findings particularly associated with parent role stress are introduced, and suggestions for using these findings to design nursing interventions are presented.
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AACN Clin Issues Crit Care Nurs · May 1991
Strengthening nurse-family relationships in critical care.
Establishing relationships with families in critical care is an essential part of high quality care. Critical care nurse-family relationships are important to the patient and family and also benefit the nurse. Thus, nurse-family relationships should be started when families first enter the critical care environment. ⋯ Essential qualities of successful relationships include: trust, respect, empathy, warmth, sensitivity, and touching, when appropriate. Each of these qualities is dependent on the verbal and nonverbal skills of the critical care nurse. As with anything worthwhile, relationship skills take practice to develop, involving a commitment to the importance of nurse-family relationships in critical care.
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AACN Clin Issues Crit Care Nurs · May 1991
Family needs and coping strategies during illness crisis.
This descriptive study was conducted to explore family needs and coping behaviors when faced with the stress of a family member's critical illness. Family systems, crisis, and coping theories provided the conceptual frameworks for this study. A convenience sample of 30 family members of 22 critically ill patients completed the Critical Care Family Needs Inventory and the Jalowiec Coping Scale and responded to a seven-item semi-structured questionnaire. ⋯ Seven of the top ten coping methods most frequently used were also identified by family members as being most effective. Coping styles labeled confronting and optimistic were found to be most useful and effective overall. Nursing interventions described by family members as helpful included: the provision of information, emotional support, and competence and manner of the nurse.
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AACN Clin Issues Crit Care Nurs · May 1991
Emergent admission to the pediatric intensive care unit: parental concerns.
To identify parental concerns when a child is suddenly admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit, 17 parents of ten critically ill children were interviewed using a structured format between 20 and 36 hours after admission about their concerns around the time of admission and at the time of interview using the Parental Concerns Scale. The individual concern items receiving the highest ratings were the child's survival, the possibility of mental or physical impairment, the child's diagnosis, and the amount of pain experienced by the child. Total concern scores decreased over time for both mothers and fathers when the child's prognosis was good and, for mothers only, when the child had an infectious illness rather than accidental injuries. Implications for nursing practice are discussed.
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When patients and their families experience the crisis of sudden hospitalization, much energy is spent providing curative interventions and physical care, often with little time available to help the family deal with the crisis. Incorporating caring behaviors into the cadre of critical care interventions must be used to help patients and families deal with the crisis. Caring is a basic value of health care delivery and embodies a spiritual and metaphysical dimension concerned with preserving, protecting, and enhancing human dignity. ⋯ Four basic behaviors form a foundation for the Humanistic CARE Model and include the interconnection and interrelation of communication, advocacy, reciprocity, and empathy. Finally, our caring actions affect each of the lives we touch. The knowledge that those actions make a difference in the lives of critically ill patients and their families provides us with the insight that we have succeeded in incorporating CARE into caring for families in crisis.