A Qatar-based study has advocated a family-centred care approach to support hospitalised children, their families, and the healthcare provision team in the delivery of paediatric psychosocial care.
The study published on qscience.com suggests for improvements to be made in four main arenas concerning Qatar’s paediatric psychosocial care provision using a family-centred perspective.
The article by Heba al-Fara from the Doha International Family Institute notes the four main areas as: education and training; healthcare environment; financial support and advocacy and future research and audits.
“If improvements are made to these four main areas, Qatar’s paediatric psychosocial care programme would more effectively cater to evidence-based child and family-friendly approaches,” says the study.
Considering the lack of data available on paediatric psychosocial care in Qatar as the main limitation, the author claims the study as a stepping stone toward future research on the topic.
According to the study, life-threatening child sicknesses and related admission to hospitals are serious family dilemmas that may have undesired consequences for all family members. It points that the basic objective of paediatric psychosocial welfare is to advocate for the well-being of families and their members, to strengthen their adaptive skills in difficult medical situations, and to better their general quality of life.
“Familial partings, shifting daily schedules, necessary frightening medical operations, alarming concerns about a minor’s future well-being, and overall familial welfare are possible sources of tension. As such, paediatric psychosocial care approaches are used more and more to advocate for family and child strength and durability during health scenarios and to improve the overall well-being of children impacted by fatal medical situations,” the article noted.
As per the article, if better education and training services are provided to families, child patients, and their families’ experiences in the hospital would be improved, bettering child patients’ recovery and their families’ resilience which would better align the practitioner–patient–family connections.
Next if the physical characteristics of the hospital setting were more visibly catered to children using colours and ease of access, as well as providing the necessary resources to provide effective care, the recovery of child patients and their family comfort levels would be improved.
Furthermore, the study argues that if sufficient financial resources were included in hospital budgets for paediatric psychosocial care services to fill the gaps in healthcare services, such as translation services, child patients and their families would have ease of communication with hospital staff and better access to information.
Lastly, if further research is provided on the experiences of child patients, their families, and hospital staff, miscommunication and ineffective service delivery would be mitigated which would offer an opportunity to build their connections within the highly stressful environment of paediatric psychosocial care.
The article has also outlined the need for a family-focused care lens on pediatric psychosocial support in Qatar. Using secondary sources, this article advocates a family-centered care approach to support hospitalised children, their families, and the healthcare provision team in the delivery of paediatric psychosocial care.
The article suggests that if the policy recommendations are applied properly, these would help Qatar’s paediatric psychosocial care programme to more effectively cater to evidence-based child and family-friendly approaches.
