Background: Pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) is a highly stressful environment to most parents specifically mothers who are very sensitive. Knowledge of their stress helps us to plan counselling strategies for the suffering parents. The objectives were to identify common maternal stress factors during their child's critical illness and to examine the relationship of different variables with the stress. Methods: It was a prospective observational study done in PICU of a tertiary care medical college hospital in Bangalore. One hundred mothers of children (1 month to 15 years) admitted to PICU for at least 24 hours were interviewed using the Parental Stress Scale (PSS: PICU), which rates 22 factors on a scale from 1 to 5. The demographic and clinical characteristics of children were also recorded and analysed statistically. Results: The average parental stress score was 3.5. Parents of children who got admitted in PICU for the first time were more stressed The main causes of extremely stressful situations were the sight of other sick children in PICU sight of monitors & equipment in PICU, their child being unresponsive, crisis in other children in the PICU.. Younger mother were more stressed than older mother, irrespective of the illness and clinical status. Age of the child, sex, socioeconomic status, urban/rural, did not vary stress levels, all had similar stress level (score>3). Among the procedures, majority (52%) parents felt intravenous cannulation as more stressful followed by blood sampling (43%). Conclusions: For a mother, first PICU admission were more stressful. Socioeconomic status, age of children and residence did not affect level of stress. Many of these stress factors can be resolved and remedial steps can be undertaken to relieve these stressors.

Background: Children admitted to hospital and ICUs for various reasons like sepsis, respiratory distress, dehydration, shock etc. require an intravenous line for medications and IV fluids. Properly securing an intravenous line is very important. It is equally important to maintain the patency of the intravenous line for longer periods of time. But there is no adequate data regarding factors affecting the duration of patency of an IV line. This study was done to compare effect of limb splinting versus non-splinting with the functional duration of peripheral IV cannula.Methods: This study was done over 3 months between October - December 2018 in pediatric patients (age 6 months to 5 years) admitted to Kempegowda Hospital. Patients were randomised into splint group and non-splint group. In the splint group a firm splint was applied to the joint that was cannulated. No such intervention was done in the non-splint group. Time from IV line placement to removal was measured.Results: Total 438 patients were taken into study. After exclusion 200 patients were given a splint and 200 were not splinted. The median survival time was more in splint group when compared to non-splint group.Conclusions: This study shows that splinting helps to maintain patency of IV line for a more longer duration than non splinting of the joint.