Examining the effect of counseling services given to families in the pediatric intensive care unit on the families' coping with anxiety and stress

Introduction: One of the major stressors for parents in the pediatric intensive care unit is the change or loss of the parental role due to physical separation, limited opportunities to take care of the child, and no longer independent, primary decision-makers in the care of the child. The disease threatens the life of the child, the diagnosis and treatment procedures are not known, the equipment in the intensive care unit, the tempo of the staff, the inability to communicate with the child increase the stress and anxiety level of the family. Aim: The aim of this study was to determine the effect of the counselling services on the families coping with anxiety and stress by providing them continues counselling by the nurse, and by giving an information booklet that is about the intensive care unit, the routines, the team and the tools and equipments used in the intensive care unit. Materials and Methods: The sample of the study consisted of 50 families in the intensive care unit of Kocaeli University between 18.01.2017-01.02.2019 and the families of the first 25 children were the control group and the next 25 children were the experimental group. Families were randomly assigned to the study.(control group and experimental group). The data of the study was collected by using the "Child Intensive Care Unit Hospital Information Form" and "Form State-Trait Anxiety Inventory" , "Coping Style of Stress Scale".During the 7-day follow-up period, families in the experimental and control groups continued to receive routine information from the doctors, and the families in the experimental group were given a Child Intensive Care Family Information Booklet and were informed and counselled between 13.00-14.00 every noon about the status of their children. On the 7th day of hospitalization, "State and Trait Anxiety Inventory and Coping Style Stress Scale" forms were applied again to the families in both groups and the study was terminated. Data were analyzed using SPSS 20.0 program (number, percentage, mean, standard deviation) using descriptive statisticalanalysis Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Shapiro-Wilkinson, Mann Whitney U test and Wilcoxon sign test, and were evaluated at 95% confidence interval and p <0.05 significance level. Results: As a result of the research; There were no statistically significant differences between the groups in terms of their sociodemographic characteristics (p> 0.05). In terms of characteristics of the child's disease, there was no statistically significant difference between the groups except for the areas where parents wanted to receive support (p> 0.05). As a result of the given information and counseling to the experimental group, the difference between state anxiety posttest mean scores of control group and experimental group were significant (p <0.05). There was no significant difference between the test mean scores of trait anxiety. (p> 0.05). Although the stress coping styles scale mean score increases It is lower than the control group and there were no statistically significant difference was found between the groups (p> 0.05). It was observed that the KGY and İY mean pre-test score of the experimental group was significantly lower than the control group, the KGY mean post-test score of the experimental group increased significantly while there was no significant change in the mean score of the experimental group. BEY posttest mean scores of the experimental group increased significantly compared to the pre-test, but no significant change was observed in the control group. Conclusions and recommendations: As a result of this study, it was found that the counseling and information services provided were effective in lowering the state anxiety levels of the parents and increased the self-confident approach submissive approach to coping with stress. Since this study is done within the thesis study time, the number of samples is limited, it can be suggested that samples should be repeated with longer research designs, especially in larger population. Key words: Anxiety, coping with stress, counseling, child intensive care