Nurse Insights: How Do Nurses Navigate the Challenges of Pediatric Nursing?
As a nurse, caring for pediatric patients can be both rewarding and challenging. Children’s unique developmental and behavioral aspects require a different approach to healthcare, which can pose some difficulties for nurses. In this article, we will discuss effective strategies, clinical approaches, and useful tips to enhance your competence and confidence in pediatric nursing care. We’ll also explore how to navigate the challenges of pediatric nursing, including understanding developmental and behavioral aspects, effective communication strategies, and more.
How Do Nurses Navigate the Challenges of Pediatric Nursing?
In our Nurse Insights series, experienced nurses offer an insider’s perspective on the nursing profession by addressing common questions, challenges, and triumphs of their careers.
Understanding Pediatric Patients: Developmental and Behavioral Aspects
In providing care to pediatric patients, it is crucial to understand that children are not just small adults. Their developmental and behavioral characteristics are different and evolving, thus influencing their health needs.
Developmental Aspects
Children undergo rapid and significant physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development. Therefore, their healthcare needs are closely tied to the phase they are at in this growth process.
They are physically smaller, with proportionately larger heads and less developed muscle control, which can affect their mobility, activity tolerance, and other physical capacities.
In terms of cognitive abilities, younger children may have a limited understanding of their health situation, while older children and adolescents can better understand and participate in their care.
The emotional and social development of a child, such as attachment to parents, response to strangers, and interaction with peers, can also impact the child’s response to medical intervention. For example, toddlers may experience separation anxiety, while school-age children may worry about missing out on playground time with their peers.
Simple tools, like the Denver Developmental Screening Test, can help to track a child’s physical and cognitive development in relation to their chronologic age.
Behavioral Aspects
Children’s behavior can be influenced by their developmental stages, temperament, experiences, and understanding of their health situation, which can significantly impact their responsiveness to healthcare interventions.
For instance, a child at the sensorimotor stage may not express pain verbally but show signs like crying, while a child at the concrete operational stage may describe their pain more accurately. It’s important to utilize a developmentally appropriate pain assessment tool.
Similarly, children’s behavior in a healthcare environment may be influenced by their fears and misconceptions about medical procedures or treatment. For instance, a preschooler may believe a needle is a punishment, and that belief may increase their anxiety.
Understanding these unique developmental and behavioral aspects can assist in providing tailored, more efficient, and less traumatic care for children. It can also help in explaining health situations to children in a way they can understand, facilitating shared decision-making in older children, and managing children’s and family’s anxiety or stress.
