Parents' support and satisfaction with their child's postoperative care

It is recognized that parents' presence during their child's hospitalization is of benefit to the parents and the child. However, the level of parental involvement in their child's care may be influenced by many factors, such as the amount of support nurses provide for parents. This article reports on two themes from the findings of a larger study on parental involvement in children's postoperative pain management - parental support and parents' satisfaction with their child's postoperative pain management. The aim of the larger study was to explore both nurses' and parents' perceptions of parental involvement in their child's postoperative pain management. The methods used were both qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative method of phenomenology was used to guide 20 nurse and 20 parent interviews. Quantitative methods involved surveying the nurses and parents on their perceptions of how supportive the nurses were towards the parents. The charts of 20 children were reviewed for pain-related data. This article reports on the issues of parent support from the results of the survey, and on satisfaction relating to their child's postoperative pain management from the parent interviews. The findings demonstrated that nurses perceived that parents were receiving more support from them than that which parents felt they were receiving. Parents were more satisfied with their child's pain management and children received more analgesia when they were cared for by a lower grade nurse.