Abstract:
The critically ill children with mechanical ventilation is a life threatening problem.
Nurses play an important role to encourage parental participation in caring for their children.
The quasi-experimental research using pretest-posttest design aimed to study the effects of
parental participation promoting program on ability to care for critically ill children with
mechanical ventilation. The sample included 30 parents of children with 1 year to 6 years of age
admitted in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, Chonburi Hospital. Data were collected during
November 2018 to January 2019. The participants were divided into experimental group (n= 15)
and control group (n= 15) by convenience sampling. The experimental group received the
parental participation promoting program, and the control group received a routine care. The
instruments included the demographic questionnaire and the questionnaire of parental ability to
care for critically ill children with mechanical ventilation. The Cronbachs alpha coefficient was
.82. The data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics and independent t-test.
The results revealed that after receiving the parental participation promoting program,
the mean score of parental ability to care for critically ill children with mechanical ventilation of
experimental group was significantly higher than the control group (t = 20.07, p< .001).
The findings indicate that nurses should apply the parental participation promoting
program on ability to care for critically ill children with mechanical ventilation in order to
enhance parental ability in caring of children with mechanical ventilation effectively