Family-Centered Care in Pediatric Health

A special issue of Children (ISSN 2227-9067). This special issue belongs to the section "Pediatric Nursing".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 September 2024 | Viewed by 472

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Division of Pediatrics, Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital, 3584 EA Utrecht, The Netherlands
Interests: intensive care; chronic complex conditions; palliative care; communication; shared decision making

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Center of Expertise of Palliative Care, Department of General Practice, Julius Center, Utrecht University Medical Center, 3584 CX Utrecht, The Netherlands
Interests: pediatric palliative care; family-centered care

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The number of children living with complex chronic conditions is rapidly increasing. Children with complex chronic conditions and their families try to live lives that are as normal as possible. Yet, the impact of disease and daily care tasks influences their ability and opportunity to participate in daily life and society. Healthcare professionals working with these families often rely on a disease-oriented approach, with a focus on disease and symptom management. Life goals are often not clearly explored or defined, which might prevent families from organizing their lives and family balance in an adequate way.

To support children with complex chronic conditions and their families, strategies with which to identify their values and preferences need to be developed and implemented in healthcare. Important questions regarding approaches to providing family-centred care remain. How do we explore what is important to an individual family? How do families define a life worth living in their own contexts? What kind of support might they benefit from to achieve their goals? How do we involve children in conversations about their own health in an age-appropriate way? What communication skills or tools do clinicians need to support children and families to elicit what is really important to them? 

This Special Issue will focus on exploring backgrounds and strategies with which to provide family-centred care in the context of children living with chronic complex conditions. Both reviews and original research (qualitative, quantitative, and mixed) will be considered for publication.

Dr. Jurrianne C. Fahner
Dr. Marijke C. Kars
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Children is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • chronic complex conditions
  • communication
  • family-centered care
  • goals of care
  • shared decision making

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Other

20 pages, 495 KiB  
Systematic Review
Child and Family Outcomes and Experiences Related to Family-Centered Care Interventions for Hospitalized Pediatric Patients: A Systematic Review
by Christine R. Hodgson, Renee Mehra and Linda S. Franck
Children 2024, 11(8), 949; https://doi.org/10.3390/children11080949 - 6 Aug 2024
Viewed by 304
Abstract
Background/Objectives: Family-centered care (FCC) is the recommended model for pediatric inpatient care. Our overall aim was to conduct a narrative synthesis of the contemporary published research on the effectiveness of FCC interventions for pediatric inpatients. Our specific objective was to critique studies of [...] Read more.
Background/Objectives: Family-centered care (FCC) is the recommended model for pediatric inpatient care. Our overall aim was to conduct a narrative synthesis of the contemporary published research on the effectiveness of FCC interventions for pediatric inpatients. Our specific objective was to critique studies of inpatient pediatric FCC interventions that evaluated child or parent outcomes. Methods: We searched five databases (Pubmed, CINAHL, Embase, PsychInfo, and Web of Science) for peer-reviewed research published from 1 January 2017 to 6 February 2024. Independent reviewers evaluated each study based on pre-specified inclusion and exclusion criteria, then extracted and narratively synthesized the data. Results: We found 16 studies of 15 interventions conducted in six countries. The studies were quantitative (n = 11), qualitative (n = 3), and mixed methods (n = 2), with most designs being of low to moderate quality based on a modified Mixed-Methods Appraisal Tool. Interventions included family-centered rounds, parent-focused health information technology, education, patient navigation, parent–peer support, partnership, and parent participation in caregiving. Most studies found significant improvements in parents’ well-being, knowledge, and participation, as well as decreased stress and anxiety with the FCC interventions compared to usual care. One study found no differences in child outcomes (infant feeding, length of stay) between usual care and a parent-participation intervention. Conclusions: Although FCC interventions led to many improved outcomes for parents, there were few well-designed comparison studies using validated tools and well-defined interventions. Higher quality research is needed to promote greater uptake and sustainability of FCC interventions globally. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Family-Centered Care in Pediatric Health)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop