About this Research Topic
Parents are important partners to collaborate with the multidisciplinary team in critical care settings, such as pediatric and neonatal intensive care, to improve quality of care. Doctors, nurses and allied health professionals must recognize the importance of family-centered care in daily practice. However, evidence suggest that they do not consistently implement these elements into practice. Another difficulty for healthcare professionals is to define who and what the family unit encompasses. Consequently, the parental needs, experiences and satisfaction have received little attention as an outcome measure in neonatology and pediatric critical care. So far, there is a growing interest around the world to establish standardized family-centered care outcome measures. An example is the EMPATHIC questionnaire measuring parent satisfaction and experiences in pediatric and neonatal intensive care settings that has been translated and validated in many languages and colleagues around the world are still working on these validation and cultural adaptation studies. Other colleagues have meanwhile gone into intervention studies to improve family-centered care practices. The Canadian FICare study is a great example of building an international network to improve family-centered care practices in neonatology. It is very exciting to see so many new ideas and interventions developed by colleagues to improve clinical outcomes of children and parents in pediatric and neonatal intensive care settings.
The aim of the Research Topic 'Family-Centered Care in Pediatric and Neonatal Critical Care Settings' is to build upon the current evidence and extend the body of knowledge related to the care of infants, children and their parents and family members. This Research Topic is specifically organized to contribute to a framework for action to implement effective family-centered care interventions and to provide evidence of evaluating current family-centered care practices in neonatology and pediatric intensive care settings.
This Research Topic seeks to publish and promote all forms of research that will contribute to the promotion of health outcomes of critically ill infants, children and their family members. Papers from clinicians and researchers across the world in pediatric and neonatal critical care disciplines are welcomed. We accept papers that present the results of a family-centered care project such as research studies, systematic reviews, audits, or quality improvement projects.
Keywords: family-centered care, parents, children, infants, neonatology, pediatric intensive care
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.