Parental satisfaction with nurses' communication and pain management in a pediatric unit

This article addresses the relationship between nurses' communication and pediatric parents' satisfaction. The study was conducted on a pediatric unit of a tertiary care teaching hospital. The design was pre-experimental, measuring satisfaction before and after two interventions, without a control group. One intervention was an informational handout about pain management provided to parents of each child at the time of admission; the other intervention was a staff inservice regarding communication with parents. Fifty parents/families of discharged patients were randomly chosen for a pre and post-telephone survey, routinely conducted each quarter. Parental responses on three items on the satisfaction survey were analyzed for significant changes. There were positive trends showing increased satisfaction ratings on all three items, but none of the increases was statistically significant per t-test (p = 0.05). The authors suggest that staff education and a parent informational handout might be useful interventions.