PSYC 450 Week 2 DB Forum 2 Example

Discussion Board Forum 2: Thread and Two Replies

PSYC 450 Children in Healthcare, Discussion Board Forum 2 (thread and two replies)

Thread by [Student Name]

The prompt, the family described and the classmates' posts are composites standing in for the course's own forum; the textbook and the journal article are real and described from their published sources; the requirements follow Liberty's public course guide for PSYC 450.

Thread

At 8:15 each morning, a team of six physicians, residents and students gathered outside the room of four-year-old Elijah, admitted with pneumonia. His father stood behind them, listening to terms he did not understand. When the attending asked, "Any questions?" and turned to leave within the same breath, he shook his head. Later he told the nurse he had wanted to mention that Elijah had not eaten since the night before and had been coughing harder after midnight. He said he had not wanted to interrupt the doctors.

Rollins et al. (2018) present family-centered care as a partnership in which families are recognized as constants in the child's life and as experts on their child. Professionals are not the only ones with knowledge worth sharing; parents know the child's habits, fears and changes better than anyone on the unit.

Kuo et al. (2012) reviewed how this approach has been applied in pediatrics. They identified core principles: information sharing, respect and honoring differences, partnership and collaboration, negotiation and care in the context of family and community. They also noted that although family-centered care is widely endorsed as the standard of pediatric care, it continues to be insufficiently implemented in practice. Elijah's rounds illustrate the gap. No one meant to exclude his father, but the routine made his knowledge invisible.

Imagine the same rounds redesigned around those principles. The team enters the room, the attending introduces each member, asks the father how Elijah's night went and listens before presenting the plan in plain words. The father's observation about eating becomes part of the assessment. The team negotiates timing, such as scheduling a chest X-ray after breakfast. None of this takes much longer, but it treats the father as a partner, and it might have caught Elijah's poor intake hours earlier. It also models something for Elijah, who watches the adults around him and learns from their tone whether this place is safe.

Classmates: what barriers do you think keep teams from practicing this kind of partnership every day?

Reply to Kendall

Kendall, you worried that rounds in the room might overwhelm families with too many people and too much jargon. That is a fair concern. Kuo et al. (2012) emphasize respecting differences, which includes asking families how involved they want to be. A team could offer the choice each morning and limit the number entering the room, while one member translates the plan into everyday language before leaving. A whiteboard in the room listing the day's goals could also help parents who think of questions after the team has gone.

Reply to Mateo

Mateo, your example of parents refusing a second IV attempt until their daughter had rested is a good test of negotiation. Rollins et al. (2018) describe partnership as shared decision making, not deference in either direction. The team could explain why the line matters, hear the parents' reasons and agree on a short rest with a clear time to try again, perhaps with a child life specialist present for the second attempt. Both sides keep their concerns, and the child stays at the center.

References

Kuo, D. Z., Houtrow, A. J., Arango, P., Kuhlthau, K. A., Simmons, J. M., & Neff, J. M. (2012). Family-centered care: Current applications and future directions in pediatric health care. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 16(2), 297-305. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-011-0751-7

Rollins, J. H., Bolig, R., & Mahan, C. C. (Eds.). (2018). Meeting children's psychosocial needs across the health-care continuum (2nd ed.). PRO-ED.