Terminally III Children Nursing Care Model: Effects on Overcoming Nurse Challenges

Abstract

To lose a child is to lose a piece of yourself, so health professionals are faced with the challenges of providing the best possible care to meet the physical and psychological needs of terminally ill children. The present study aimed to implement a care model for terminally ill children and investigate its effect on overcoming the challenges that imped the nursing care management. A purposive sample of 150 nurses with different categories and a mean age of 25.8 + 4.4 who were working in different pediatric intensive care unit at Children Hospital affiliated to Ain Shams University, New Children Hospital and El Moniera Hospital affiliated to Cairo University, El Mataryia Hospital and Cancer Institute affiliated to General Organization of Teaching Hospitals and Institutes, Ministry of Health and Population. The five tools of data collection used were pre/post interviewing questionnaire, observation checklist, Prognostic Inventory Scale as Pediatric evaluation Disability Inventory Scale, Flacker and Kielys Assessment tools, Karnofsky performance status Instrument and Elizabeth Kubler-Ross Theory. The study concluded that the terminally ill care model had a positive effect on managing the nurses' challenges and recommended further researches in that field to address this model in the nursing curricula.