Family presence during paediatric resuscitation and invasive procedures: the parental experience: An integrative review

Abstract

Family presence during paediatric resuscitation and invasive procedures: the parental experience: An integrative review Background: The evolvement of family-centred care has been an ongoing process since the Platt Report 1959. Family-centred care has become the modern working model in paediatrics and obstetrics. Parental participation is central to family-centred care. Whether it is applied consistently remains to be concluded. Aim: The aim of the study was to describe the family experiences of being present during paediatric resuscitation and invasive procedures. Method: The design used in this study is an integrative review by Whittemore & Knafl. Databases PubMed and CINAHL were searched for primary research concerning the parental experiences of participating in paediatric resuscitation and invasive procedures. Eighteen studies were included in the study. A quality assessment tool was applied. Findings: A pro-parental presence was the results of 17 of the 18 included studies. Six common themes were found: 'Being there', 'Calming child', 'Calming parent', 'Having the right', 'Do it again' and 'Seeing is believing'. Conclusion: Including family in resuscitation and invasive procedures requires openness as a working model and demands organisational changes and the updating of guidelines. The inseparability of parent-child is attachment theory practised, an innate quality of being a child as well as a parent. Recommendations are to have a facilitator present during resuscitation and invasive procedures to alleviate stress on everyone's part, enabling family participation.

Stressful Experiences of Parents in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit: Searching for the Most Intensive PICU Stressors

“…Many studies confirm the importance of parents being present and participating in health care of their child [ 40 , 41 , 42 ]. Also, many benefits of parental presence during invasive procedures in the PICU have also been reported for both the child and parents, including presence during resuscitation, regardless of the outcome [ 43 ]. Thus, it is easier for the child to stay in an unknown environment, because they have by their side a familiar face, someone whom they trust, and parents feel safer, knowing at all times what is happening with their child.…”

The construction of contemporary nursing identity from narrative accounts of practice and professional life

“…Thus, we have found research works describing and analysing the ways in which nurses carry out professional care, but these works do not highlight the ways in which nurses experience professional care as part of their lives, as reflections which condition the theoretical and practical consistency of their knowledge. That is to say, even though we have found references to how professional practice is experienced as years go by, and to how scarcity of resources is experienced (with some consequences, such as professional burnout), we have not seen these experiences put in connection with the opportunity for self-improvement and self-reinvention prompted by a situation of collapse [ 78 , 79 , 80 , 81 , 82 , 83 ]. Precisely the subtheme ‘the sculpting of care’ allows us to see that traditional attitudes of commitment and unquestioning loyalty keep a link with a deeply rooted spirit of humanisation; that the reigning technological paradigm becomes, in a sense, a hindrance for the preservation of such a professional culture and fullness.…”

Parental presence during invasive pediatric procedures: what does it depend on?

“…In regard to the wishes of parents to be present during invasive procedures even in worse-case scenarios such as critically ill children or resuscitation, they want to be there 32 - 35 . It has been also reported that families perceive that their presence is helpful to the patient and essential for medical care 36 .…”