Measuring family-centred care: working with children and their parents in a Turkish hospital

Abstract

Rationale, aims and objectives: Family-centred care is the model of care in most children’s hospitals, but is difficult to measure. This study examined health professionals’ attitudes to working with children and with parents in a Turkish hospital. It builds on previous studies, using the same questionnaire, to test a component of family-centred care.

Method: The “Working with Families” questionnaire contains scores for working with children and parents and demographic questions. Nurses, doctors and allied health staff working with children in a Turkish paediatric hospital were asked to complete this anonymous questionnaire (response rate 91%). We used Wilcoxon signed rank test to compare the two scores; the influence of demographic characteristics was tested with ANOVA.

Results: Participants (N=205) gave more positive mean scores for working with children (4.242, SD=0.53) than parents (2.26, SD=0.8) (p<0.05). Influencing factors were similar to other studies, except for participants having children of their own - those with children gave a less positive mean score for working with parents than working with children (p=0.003); holding a specialist paediatric qualification had a similar effect (p<0.001).

Conclusion: Similarly to other studies in this series, health professionals were much more positive about working with children than parents, with much stronger differences. Questions about the applicability of family-centred care as a model of care in this Turkish hospital arise. Theoretically, if family-centred care was being implemented effectively, there would be no difference. Education about family-centred care is needed, as well as further research to investigate why these differences occur.