Department of Anthropology, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan 48202, USA.
Omega (Westport). 2012;65(2):151-68. doi: 10.2190/OM.65.2.e.
Many childhood deaths in the United States occur in pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) and parents have special needs in this death context. As an interdisciplinary research team, we discuss conceptual and design issues encountered in creating a new instrument, the Bereaved Parent Needs Assessment-PICU, for assessing parents' needs in this setting. Using a qualitative approach, our team previously explored how the culture and related ways of providing care in one urban Midwestern children's hospital PICU affected parents' bereavement needs and experiences. We describe using this qualitative foundation in the development of a new quantitative instrument to more widely validate and measure bereaved parents' needs around the time of a child's death across multiple PICUs. We highlight a series of issues that warrant consideration in designing a research instrument for this vulnerable population including setting and context, format and content, temporality, recruitment, and content expertise.
许多美国儿童死亡发生在儿科重症监护病房 (PICU)，父母在这种死亡情况下有特殊需求。作为一个跨学科的研究团队，我们讨论了在创建一个新工具（即丧失儿童父母需求评估-PICU）时遇到的概念和设计问题，该工具用于评估父母在这种环境下的需求。我们的团队之前使用定性方法探讨了一家中西部城市儿童医院 PICU 的文化以及相关的护理方式如何影响父母的丧亲需求和体验。我们描述了如何利用这一定性基础来开发新的定量工具，以便更广泛地验证和衡量多个 PICU 中儿童死亡时丧亲父母的需求。我们强调了在为这一弱势群体设计研究工具时需要考虑的一系列问题，包括设置和背景、格式和内容、时间性、招募和内容专业知识。
