A STUDY TO ASSESS THE LEVEL OF STRESS AMONG PARENTS OF HOSPITALIZED CHILDREN IN THE PEDIATRIC WARD AT SELECTED HOSPITALS

Abstract

Background of study

children enjoy healthy child life with little need for specialized health care services. However, some children experiences difficulties in early childhood and require access to and utilization of considerable health care resources over time. The nature and the severity of illness and the circumstances surrounding the admission are major factors, especially for parents. They experienced of stress when the admission is unexpected than expected. Ill child become the focus of parent’s life and the parent’s most pressing need is for information. They want to know if child will live, will be same as before and want to know why things are been done to the child. they generally have no opportunity to prepare themselves or their children for an unanticipated admission they feel helpless as well as concern about child receiving appropriate care from others. Method the descriptive tools used for data collection, pilot study and plan for data analysis. This study includes the descriptive research approach, survey research design, simple random sampling was used and the sample number 100. The study was conducted to assess the level of parental stress among the parents of the hospitalized child in selected hospitals. Results: The analyzed data revealed that were drawn on the basis of the major findings of the study. In terms of association of the level of stress had no significant association of demographic variables such as gender of the parents, that mean stress score in the area of general aspect of stress was 25.78 ± 4.29,for hospitalization of child, it was 17.07 ± 3.32, for the area of treatment and prognosis it was 16.53 ± 2.44 and for the area of consequences of the disease it was16.93 ± 3.118. Overall mean percentage stress score was 63.59 ± 7.75. history of previous hospitalization and the occurrence of the disease which had significant association with the stress score.