Exploring parents' experience and attitude toward their children in pain

摘要

Children's language, cognitive, and behavioral capabilities are still under development; children's experience of pain usually has to be conveyed by caregivers to the medical personnel, therefore, the communication process must further consider the parents' opinion, who may be the primary decision makers of the pain assessment. The rise of information technology not only changes our lifestyles, interpersonal communication patterns produce rapid changes due to the prevalence of Internet, and simultaneously has a significant impact in medical communication. This study explored parents' experience and attitude toward their children in pain and the use of mobile phone applications (apps) provide a new platform for delivering healthcare information. The semi-structured interviews are applied to this study and selected 17 parents who have children aged 3 to 7 years as research subjects. The aims of this study are to clarify the parentss dealing with an attitude of pain in children, children's experience in significant illness or injury and parents' views on children using technology products; the results of the interviews is conducted with grounded theory analysis. The present study finds that children generally experienced pain through sickness or accidents. When children experienced pain, and there are immediately observable external traumas or symptoms, then parents immediately seek medical attention. If there are no obvious symptoms, parents will first have a period of observation and reprocessing. In the care process, parents are in great need of nursing and medical care knowledge, while children need to be accompanied by others. Currently, most parents own smartphones and know how to use apps, so they can allow children to look at electronic touchscreen products and can accept the future application of these products in medical communications, but they also believe that there must be time restrictions. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the attitudes and needs of parents and children when they face pain, as a reference for the development of medical communications in the future.