Health Care Professionals' Experiences of Providing Care to Hospitalized Medically Fragile Infants and Their Parents.

PURPOSE

To understand contemporary experiences of pediatric health care professionals' (HCPs) caring for hospitalized Medically Fragile Infants (MFI) and their parents.

DESIGN AND METHODS

Convenience sampling was adopted to recruit 26 HCPs who provided care to MFI and their parents on inpatient units at a large tertiary pediatric hospital in Western Canada. Participants participated in either a focus group or individual face-to-face interview. Themes and concepts emerged during open and focused coding.

FINDINGS

HCPs encountered barriers to establishing relationships with parents, including: (a) intricate nature of MFI, (b) lack of social supports, (c) inconsistency, (d) moral distress, (e) burnout, and (f) struggle to gain control. HCPs utilized strategies to establish relationships with parents, including: (a) normalizing and building parental confidence, (b) tailoring care and being flexible, (c) providing parent care, and (d) optimizing communication.

CONCLUSION

HCPs aimed to establish relationships built on trust with parents of MFI to empower and enable parents to care for their infants. The relationship was the vehicle to enhance the care provided and well-being of MFI. HCPs encountered barriers to establishing trusting relationships and utilized strategies to establish such relationships.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

It is valuable to understand the importance that the parent-HCPs relationship plays in the care provided to hospitalized MFI and how lack thereof can lead to moral distress and burnout among HCPs. Increasing HCPs' awareness of barriers and strategies to the establishment of a trusting relationship with parents could help improve the collaborative relationship between parents and HCPs.