Roadblocks to family centered care when a chronically ill child is hospitalized

Little has been written about how repeated hospitalizations affect family life when the context is chronic rather than acute illness. This article presents findings from a qualitative study designed to explore parents' views when their chronically ill children were hospitalized. These findings address the problems arising when the family's frame of reference is oriented toward their experience with long-term illness and the frame of reference of the professional health care provider in the hospital is oriented toward acute disease. It is suggested that unacknowledged discrepancies in viewpoints may cause the relationships between family members and professional health care providers to become adversarial, a situation which negatively affects both the effectiveness of care and perceived satisfaction with care.