The Greek hospital and community nurse's role of offering support, counselling skills and nursing rehabilitation to parents of children with chronic medical, surgical or genetic conditions or disabilities

Michalopoulos, Helen 2006. The Greek hospital and community nurse's role of offering support, counselling skills and nursing rehabilitation to parents of children with chronic medical, surgical or genetic conditions or disabilities. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University.

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Abstract

Children with altered body images due to chronic illnesses, surgery, genetic diseases or disabilities are living longer (Newacheck et al., 1998) which requires nurses to undertake their basic nursing role of providing psychological support though offering information, counselling and nursing rehabilitation (Johnson, 2000 Maguire and Parkes, 1998). The parents of these children face a drastic change in their lifestyle which requires them to adapt by using personal, family and community resources, according to Hentinen and Kyngas (1998). The aim of this study was to explore the perceptions of Greek nurses and parents of children with chronic health problems (CHP) in relation to the nurse's role of offering psychological support. This study used a data and methodological triangulation approach which included two levels of persons, parents and nurses, and a combination of qualitative and quantitative paradigms. A survey was given to 103 parents and 83 community or hospital nurses, from these samples 30 parents and 30 nurses were chosen to be interviewed. King's Conceptual Framework of Goal Attainment (CFGA) guided the study and provided a framework in which to present the findings. The main findings from the descriptive analysis, chi-square and Fisher's exact tests, along with the qualitative findings, concluded that many nurses and parents both felt that nurses were not well enough informed, many nurses had offered information but parents refused to accept it and that many parents and nurses were unaware of the nurse's role in nursing rehabilitation. A disagreement was found between the samples as to whether or not it was the nurse's role to evaluate the adaptation of the child and his parents, an important part of nursing rehabilitation according to Gibbons et al. (1995). Additional findings were that a few parents had the fear of surgery for their child, there was great disagreement concerning the importance of whether or not these children should attend public school and that many health conditions could have been prevented. Although religion had not been included in the questionnaire, during the qualitative portion of the study the parents emphasised the importance of their Greek Orthodox religion as a source of strength. Comparisons of the perceptions of both sample groups provided information which may assist in developing future approaches in nursing practice, nursing research and nursing education.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Status:	Unpublished
Subjects:	R Medicine > RT Nursing
ISBN:	9781303173899
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 March 2016
Last Modified:	06 Jun 2014 15:05
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/54252

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