A taxonomy to assess the interaction between nurses and children:Development and reliability

Aims and objectives The aim of this study was to develop a valid and reliable instrument to assess the nurse-child interaction during medical or nursing interventions. Background Communication is an important competency for the professional practice of nurses and physicians. The nurse-patient relationship is fundamental for high-quality care. It has been suggested that if nurses have more skills to interact with children, care will be less distressing and less painful for the children. Design A qualitative observational psychometric study; the GRRAS checklist was used. Methods In-depth video-analyses, taxonomy development (19 videos) and testing it is psychometric properties (10 videos). Three observers micro-analysed video recordings of experienced nurses changing children's wound dressing in a specialised Burn Centre. Results The nurse-child interaction taxonomy (NCIT) was developed to observe and score the interactional behaviour between nurse and child. The taxonomy has three main patterns: being considerate, attuning oneself, and procedural interventions, subdivided in eight dimensions. These dimensions contain 16 elements that can be observed and scored on a 7-point scale. Intra-rater, inter-rater reliability and agreement were good. Conclusions This study shows that interaction between nurses and children can be assessed reliably with the NCIT by an experienced observer or alternatively, scoring by two observers is recommended. Relevance to clinical practice The development of the taxonomy is an important step to find evidence for the best way for nurses to interact with children during nursing interventions or medical events and as such, ultimately, contributes to providing the best care possible

Improvement of burn care by video interaction guidance

Aims: To evaluate the effect of video interaction guidance on improving the nurse-child relationship during the wound care procedures. Additionally, determine whether the interactional behavior of nurses is related to pain and distress experienced by children. Methods: The interactional skills of seven nurses receiving video interaction guidance were compared with those of ten other nurses. The nurse-child interactions were video-taped during wound care procedures. Of the nurses receiving video interaction guidance, three wound dressing changes were videotaped before they received video interaction guidance and three after. The interaction between nurse and child was scored with the Nurse-child interaction taxonomy by two experienced raters. The COMFORT-B behavior scale was used to assess pain, and distress. All raters were blinded regarding video interaction guidance allocation and the sequence of tapes Results: Five nurses in the intervention group (71 %) showed clinically relevant progress on the taxonomy while only four nurses (40 %) showed similar progress in the control group [p = .10]. A weak association was found between the nurses’ interactions and the children's pain and distress [r = −.30, p = .002]. Conclusions: This is the first study to show that video interaction guidance can be used as a tool to train nurses to become more effective during patient encounters. Furthermore, nurses’ interactional skills are positively associated with a child's pain and distress level