Coping and Meaning-Making Strategies Described by Parents of Children with Medical Complexity

Parents of children with medical complexity (CMC) experience stressors related to caregiving, navigating the healthcare system, and managing their own well-being. There is a dearth of research examining parental coping strategies used in response to these challenges. Informed by the revised Transactional Model of Coping, the current study aimed to characterize coping among a sample of parents of CMC.

Twenty parental caregivers of CMC served by the Complex Care Program at a large midwestern pediatric hospital participated in one-hour semi-structured qualitative interviews.

Participants described a breadth of ways of coping with challenges in their lives, including problem-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies. They also described a range of meaning-making strategies, represented by themes celebration of child, maintaining a commitment to caregiving, striving to be a "good parent," and recognizing gains from caregiving experiences.

Parents of CMC described coping with their challenges in diverse ways, including using many meaning-making strategies. Future research should investigate coping strategies more systematically with representative samples to enable culturally informed intervention development to support parent and family well-being among those who care for CMC.