Marginating the interpersonal relationship: Nurses and parent's experiences of communication in pediatric wards

Parents have been used to staying with their sick children in hospital for more than a decade. Nowadays, parents are inevitable elements of child care in hospitals. The parent-nurse relationship is considered to be a cornerstone of high quality pediatric nursing care, however there is little knowledge on the quality of nurse-parent communication in internal pediatric wards. The study, therefore, was designed to explore experiences of parents and nurses regarding parent–nurse communication in hospitals. Using inductive thematic analysis method, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 14 parents and 10 nurses drawn from two pediatric hospitals in Tehran. Five major themes were identified namely: downgrading the communication with parent or child, restricting informing parents, taking lessons from parent-nurse relationships, parent-to-parent emotional support and factors contributing in communication downgrading. The results showed that lack of time and high-load work due to imbalance between human resource's demand and supply, nurses’ insufficient interpersonal skills and the nature of physician-nurse relationship are the factors contributing in downgrading the parents-nurses communication. The study revealed that time shortage due to understaffing and nurses’ insufficient interpersonal competences led to downgrading the communication between parents and nurses and consequently, not meeting parents’ supportive and informative needs. Given that parents are usually their child’s bedside presented and enormous contacts of nursing staffs and parents are unavoidable, developing nurses’ communication skills through continued education and role models have vital importance.