Parental presence, participation, and engagement in paediatric hospital care: A conceptual delineation

Abstract

Aim: To delineate between the concepts of parental presence, participation, and engagement in paediatric hospital care.

Design: The concepts' uses in the literature were analysed to determine attributes, influences, and relationships.

Methods: Delineations of each concept are established and conceptual definitions are proposed following Morses' methods.

Data sources: MEDLINE (PubMed); CINAHL, PsycINFO, Sociology Source Ultimate (EBSCOhost); Embase, Scopus (Elsevier); Google Scholar. Search dates October 2021, February 2023.

Results: Multinational publications dated 1991-2023 revealed these concepts represent a range of parental behaviours, beliefs, and actions, which are not always perceptible to nurses, but which are important in family-integrated care delivery. Parental presence is the state of a parent being physically and/or emotionally with their child. Parental participation reflects parents' performing caregiving activities with or without nurses. Parental engagement is a parents' state of emotional involvement in their child's health and the ways they act on their child's behalf.

Conclusion: These concepts' manifestations are important to parental role attainment but may be inadequately understood and considered by healthcare providers.

Implications: Nurses have influence over parents' parental presence, participation, and engagement in their child's care but need support from healthcare institutions to ensure equitable family-integrated care delivery.

Impact: Problem: Lack of clear definition among these concepts results in incomplete and at times inequitable family-integrated care delivery.

Findings: Parental presence is an antecedent to parental participation, and parental presence and participation are elements of parental engagement. The concepts interact to influence one another.

Impact: Hospitalized children, their families, nurses, and researchers will benefit through a better understanding of the concepts' attributes, interactions, and implications for enhanced family-integrated care delivery.

Keywords: concept delineation; engagement; family-centred care; family-integrated care; hospital care; nursing; paediatric(s); parent(ing); participation; presence.