Parent's views of family centred care in a South African academic Hospital in Gauteng

• Main Author: Ndlovu, Mathoto Sinnah
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10539/24655

Introduction Admission of a child in hospital is a stressful situation for the child, parents and family. According to the American National Centre for Family/Professional Development (2009) Family Centred Care is important as this can improve patient and family outcomes, improve the patient’s and family’s experience, increase patient and family satisfaction, build on child and family strengths, increase professional satisfaction, decrease health care costs, and lead to more effective use of health care resources. Hence, there is a need for Family Centred Care and this should be standard practice in health care institutions. While Family Centred Care is known to be beneficial, the approach has not received specific attention in most hospitals in South Africa. Little is also known about the parental views on family centred care in the South African context. Purpose and objectives The purpose of the study was to describe parents’ views on Family Centred Care in two general paediatric medical wards of an academic hospital with a view to develop to improve Family Centred Care in the future. The objectives are to describe parents’ views regarding Family Centred Care with the use of Family Centred Care Scale and to compare parents’ views in the two paediatric medical wards. Method This study was conducted using a quantitative design with a descriptive, cross sectional, non-experimental survey, using a researcher-administered assessment validated tool entitled Family Centred Care Scale (FCCS) with a 5-point Likert scale (Curley, Hunsberger, and Harris, 2013). The total population N=161 parents of the total sum of children’s parents admitted in the two medical wards of a particular month were asked to participate in the survey if they met the inclusion criteria. Results The results from the matched p scores (p<0.05) from the importance and consistency subscales show that the parents expectations of the nurses’ actions are being fulfilled with regard to Family Centred care. The match scores were all above 50% however, the item “nurses help me feel welcomed” rated the lowest. This could be because of the rigid vi and short visiting hours. There was no statistically difference in the match scores of Ward A and Ward B. Conclusion There is general satisfaction of family-centred care in the two paediatric wards from the respondents. The respondents from both wards in the study did not differ significantly in terms of family-centred care views, as portrayed by the Family-Centred Care Scale. There is a need to replicate this study on parents whose children have been discharged but meanwhile attention to the rigid visiting hours appears to be warranted. === GR2018