Home-like care: Collaboration between parents and nurses in everyday situations when children are hospitalized

Abstract

When children are hospitalized, parents and nurses need to collaborate. This study aims to investigate how parents and nurses experience collaborating and sharing responsibilities and tasks when providing home-like care for hospitalized children in everyday situations. This qualitative study used a hermeneutic phenomenological approach with observations and interviews and was conducted in a general medical pediatric unit. Twelve parents of eleven hospitalized children between the ages of 1 and 6 years with various medical diagnoses and seventeen nurses who cared for those children participated in the study. Parents and nurses collaborated and shared responsibilities and tasks to provide home-like care for hospitalized children in everyday situations by making mealtimes seem familiar, maintaining customary sleeping patterns, adapting washing and dressing routines, and facilitating play and activity. Parents and nurses collaborated to maintain a familiar rhythm in an unfamiliar environment to enhance the children’s well-being. The nurses’ degree of involvement in the children’s everyday situations varied from little to moderate to strong, with parents assuming the main responsibilities. Nurses’ involvement in children’s everyday situations was variable, depending on the complexity of the situations.