As hospitals move toward family-centered care, there is a greater need to evaluate the response of the whole family, not just the patient.<\/strong><\/p>\n By exploring the relationships between hospitalized children\u2019s anxiety level, mothers\u2019 use of coping strategies and mothers\u2019 satisfaction with the hospital experience,<\/strong> Dr. Sherwood Burns-Nader, a child life specialist and assistant professor in UA\u2019s College of Human Environmental Sciences’ department of human development and family studies, hoped to learn more about how the health-care team can promote coping strategies in patients and families.<\/p>\n \u201cCoping patterns are important because they facilitate a person’s handling of a stressful experience<\/strong>,\u201d Burns-Nader said. \u201cIf someone is going through a tough time, positive coping patterns provide extra resources that can help that person deal with the demand of a stressor.\u201d<\/p>\n The study, \u201cThe relationship between mothers\u2019 coping patterns and children\u2019s anxiety about their hospitalization as reflected in drawings,\u201d which was co-authored by Burns-Nader; Dr. Maria Hernandez-Reif, UA professor and director of UA\u2019s Pediatric Development Research Lab; and CHES alumna Maggie Porter, was accepted for publication in the Journal of Child Health Care<\/i>.<\/p>\n Burns-Nader looked at 48 mothers and children (24 mother-child pairs) who were admitted to the pediatric unit at DCH Regional Medical Center for a short period of stay. The children ranged in age from 5 to 11, with 54 percent being black and 46 percent white.<\/strong> The families predominantly represented the lower middle to middle socioeconomic status.<\/p>\n Through the use of questionnaires that looked at the mother\u2019s coping behaviors and her satisfaction with the hospital and drawings by her hospitalized child, Burns-Nader discovered the more coping strategies a mother used, the less anxiety her child felt. In addition, when mothers used coping strategies, the more satisfied they were with the hospital experience.<\/p>\n There are many coping strategies, both positive and negative, including exercising, seeking religious support, focusing on the positive, distancing one’s self, acting out, eating, drinking and more<\/strong>.<\/p>\n In this study, coping patterns were grouped into three categories: family integration (relying on family members to assist in the care of nonhospitalized children); knowledge of the hospital experience (gathering information about the child’s diagnosis); and maintaining social support (going for a walk with a friend).<\/p>\n \u201cPositive coping patterns increase hope and help one feel his stress could be manageable with support found in the coping patterns<\/strong>,\u201d Burns-Nader said.<\/p>\n In determining the child\u2019s anxiety, Burns-Nader used children\u2019s drawings, a technique that has long been established in clinical practice as a way to measure emotional status.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes you cannot see how a child is thinking through their behaviors,\u201d Burns-Nader said. \u201cHowever, a drawing allows you to see their ideas, fears and concerns. It is just an insight into the child\u2019s thoughts and anxieties.\u201d<\/p>\n With this study, each child was given a sheet of white paper and a box of eight basic crayons and asked to draw a person in the hospital. Burns-Nader then looked at a variety of features in the drawing \u2013 facial expression, size of the person compared to his environment, presence of hospital equipment, use of colors, position of the person on the bed, omission or exaggeration of body parts — to determine the child\u2019s anxiety level<\/strong>.<\/p>\n While this particular study looked at a small sampling of families with short hospital stays, Burns-Nader hopes to expand her research in the future by looking at how daily encounters such as out-of-pocket expenses and unexpected visitors impact the stress of parents, as well as exploring the anxiety level in children who have longer hospital stays.<\/p>\n Research on these relationships could provide information to health-care teams that may affect children\u2019s care and recovery. Hospitals can help families cope with a child\u2019s hospitalization by providing resources to the family and child such as giving information to the family, offering a family break room, supporting the hospitalized child during periods of family absence and maintaining a parent reference library.<\/p>\n Study findings also imply the need for interventions to familiarize children with medical procedures and equipment to decrease anxiety and to provide activities that allow children to express the sources of anxiety in an acceptable manner<\/strong>, Burns-Nader said. Medical teams could provide information through playroom and bedside activities or through pre-admission tours, she added.<\/p>\n \u201cThe medical field is utilizing family-centered care. This means we are caring for more than the illness,\u201d she said. \u201cThe relevance of this study is that it helps us, as medical team members, see how we can care for the psychosocial needs of our patients and families. This is important because a positive psychosocial response is related to recovery and healing from illnesses.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the University of Alabama press release via Newswise: No mother wants to see her child hospitalized, but how she copes with it could impact the child\u2019s anxiety level, a… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,9],"tags":[123,45,178,101,73,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12078"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12078"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12122,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12078\/revisions\/12122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"MotherwithBaby\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/MotherwithBaby.jpg\")
<\/a>No mother wants to see her child hospitalized, but how she copes with it could impact the child\u2019s anxiety level<\/strong>, a recent study by a University of Alabama researcher found.<\/p>\n