Exploring the boundaries of pediatric practice: nurse stories related to relationships

Pediatric nurses struggle to find the right level of involvement with children and families. The purpose of this study was to illuminate nurses' struggles and insights as they learned to find the interpersonal boundaries of their own practice. The phenomenological method of Heideggerian hermeneutics was used to analyze data from audiotaped and transcribed single interviews of five pediatric nurses. The analysis of the transcriptions involved multiple stages of interpretation using a research team. The themes that emerged from the data were: (a) pediatric nurse as family caregiver; (b) finding the right level of care: over-involvement vs. crossing the line; (c) caring and the dying child; and (d) caring for the caregiver. Implications for pediatric nursing practice are explored.