Levels of nursing support and satisfaction of parents with children having pediatric inpatient care

Objective: This study aims to investigate the level of inpatient child-care satisfaction of parents. Material and method: T his descriptive, correlational and cross-sectional study consisted of 143 parents whose children were monitored as inpatients between December 2019 and February 2020 in the pediatric clinics. The data were collected with introductory information form, Nurse-Parent Support Tool (NPST) and Pediatric Quality of Life Healthcare Satisfaction Inventory (PedsQL-HCSS). In the analysis of the research, Cronbach's Alpha, independent groups t -test (student t-test), One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), Mann-Whitney U test, KruskallWallis and Spearman Correlation were used. Results: The average NPST score of the parents in the study is 64.16 +/- 20.75, and the PedsQL-HCSS average score is 55.22 +/- 24.22, which is at a moderate level. In parents' perception of nurse support level, the emotional support factor has the lowest score and the information and communication support factor has the highest score. Regarding the health care satisfaction levels of parents, the factor of emotional needs has the lowest score while the general satisfaction factor has the highest score. As parents' ages increase, their perception of nurse support in providing quality care also increases ( p < 0.05 ). The NPST total score and PedsQL-HCSS information score of parents of children with chronic diseases are lower than those with acute diseases ( p < 0.05 ). There is a high level positive correlation between the NPST total score and the PedsQL-HCSS general satisfaction score ( r = 0.712, p < 0.001 ), and between the NPST total score and the PedsQL-HCSS total score ( r = 0.755, p < 0.001 ). Conclusion: Parents of hospitalized children reported a medium level of satisfaction with their health treatment and support from nurses. Emotional support scored lowest among parents' perceptions of nurse help, whereas information and communication support scored highest. The subscale measuring emotional needs had the lowest score among parents' satisfaction with healthcare, while general satisfaction factor had the highest score. Parents' satisfaction with health care was found to increase in parallel with their perception of nurse support. Implications for practice: When parents of hospitalized children receive nursing assistance, their stress and anxiety levels are lowered, which in turn boosts their con fidence in the nurses and their satisfaction with health services, which consequently has a favorable impact on the child's care and treatment. (c) 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.