Nurse-Parent Communication in Pediatric Units of B. P Koirala Institute of Health Sciences, Dharan, Nepal: A Parent's Perspective Study

Background& Objective Communication is challenging in pediatric setting. Parents need for communication may not always be met by the nursing staff. So, this study aimed to describe the influencing factors, strength and weakness of nurse-parent communication. Materials& Methods A descriptive cross-sectional study with 150 parents of hospitalized children was carried out at Pediatric Unit I& II of BPKIHS, Dharan. Consecutive sampling technique using pre-tested self-prepared semi structured interview questionnaire was used for the data collection. Parents perspective about their communication with the nurses was interviewed. Collected data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results The mean age of the parents was 30 years. Parents rated communication with the nursing staff positively and about 68 % of the parents felt that it was easy to communicate with the nurses. About 61 % described strength and about 39 % described weakness of nurse-parent communication. More than half (52 %) of the parents were completely satisfied with the communicating nurses. Mother tongue, ethnicity, ability to understand Nepali language by parents, length of hospital stay and discharge of the child are statistically significant with nurse-parent communication (0.010, 0.004, 0.005, 0.045& 0.030 respectively). Conclusion The findings concluded that majority of the parents had received emotional support and regular information from the nurses and mother tongue, ethnicity, ability to understand Nepali language by the parents, the length of hospital stay and discharge of the children were associated with nurse-parent communication and were the factors influencing the nurse-parent communication in the study. Thus, these factors should be considered for effective communication in pediatric settings.