Introduction
Swedish acute paediatric wards usually focuses on children with urgent and short-time illnesses and the care is not always suited for a dying child. Caring for dying children in this context therefor faces special challenges and needs to be further investigated through research from the health care professionals´ (HCP) perspective.
Purpose
The aim was to describe caring as presented in professional caregivers’ experiences of caring for dying children in paediatric ward.
Material
Four HCP in a paediatric ward, which had been caring for at least one dying child during the last five years, participated.
Methods
A phenomenological approach was chosen using qualitative in-depth interviews, starting with one opening question, continuing with follow-up questions according to responsive listening. Data were analysed following four steps suggested by Giorgi: reading to capture the global sense, constitution of parts into ‘meaning units’, transformation from implicit meaning to explicit constituents and gaining structure.
Results
The findings are represented in five constituents. Presence is a prerequisite for caring when a child is dying. Self-knowledge and support from others are suggested to help when the HCP is suffering and struggling with the injustice in dying. The essence of caring for dying children is like a musical attuned composition. The moments are vulnerable and could easily be disrupted and turn into disharmony.
Conclusions
The HCP needs self-knowledge to be true and sensitive in the perceived situation of injustice when caring for dying children and their families. Caring assumes presence; however, caring for dying children is found to mean suffering to HCP and raises the need for support from others.
2013.
2nd PNAE Congress on Paediatric Nursing, 7th-8th June 2013, Glasgow, United Kingdom