Nutritional care of the hospitalised child: the parents' perspective

Abstract

Child health has been identified and targeted as an area needing specialised funding and innovative interventions by the New Zealand government. Currently there is little published research in New Zealand on children's dietary intake and nutritional status. This qualitative exploratory research was undertaken to identify, describe and provide an explanation of parents' perceptions of their experience in meeting the nutritional needs of a hospitalised child. Nine parents of hospitalised children from a regional hospital, which services a community of a hundred thousand people, were interviewed providing nine hours of tape-recorded data. Through the process of thematic content analysis the central theme of the parent continuing to be primarily responsible for their child's nutritional needs whilst hospitalised emerged. Parents are willing and able to provide this care for their child with support from health professionals. Parents reported that their goal in nutritional care was to provide the child with any food to encourage them to eat while in hospital. Healthy eating habits were left behind in the stress, and non-nutritional needs, of their hospitalised child. Problems were identified in the area of relationships between parents and health care professionals. These focused on communication issues. This was particularly evident for the parents of children who experienced hospital for the first time, when the parent was unsure of their role. Recommendations were developed from the results to assist parents to prepare themselves and their child for hospital care, to facilitate parent participation when a child is hospitalised, and to ease the transition for a parent and child in returning home again. Recommendations were also developed for health professionals who have contact with parents and children as this influences the nutritional care of the hospitalised child.