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MUHC researchers develop a questionnaire for children to determine if their hospitalization made them fearful, anxious, worried…

Children who spend time in the intensive care unit of a hospital can be traumatized by the experience even months after returning home. Dr. Janet Rennick from the Research Institute of The Montreal Children's Hospital of the ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ Health Centre and her colleagues have developed the Children's Critical Illness Impact Scale to measure psychological distress in children following hospital discharge. This is the first self-report scale ever created to measure the psychological impact of intensive care unit hospitalization on children. The Journal of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine recently published the study.

This 23-item questionnaire provides a tool that will allow health care professionals to pick up on and recognize those children who need psychological support as a result of their hospital stay. It is based on the results of 64 interviews conducted with children who had been hospitalized in an intensive care unit, their parents, and health care professionals. The study was conducted across three Canadian pediatric hospitals.

"We know some children suffer post traumatic stress symptoms after having spent time in the intensive care unit," explains Dr. Rennick, "Parents and children have described delusional memories of their hospital experience which continue to bother the child after they go home. In addition, parents have described behavioural changes and ongoing fears in their children, and children have told us they don't feel the same as they did before they were critically ill. This tells us something negative is going on with these children, but there was no way to capture the whole story since questionnaires had not been developed specifically for use with this population of children. As a result, we found that some kids were falling through the cracks and not getting the help needed to cope with the stress of hospitalization."

Dr. Rennick and her colleagues decided to develop a questionnaire specifically for children aged six to 12 years. It was a challenging exercise because they had to find a way of interviewing children that would encourage and allow them to share their feelings and fears.

The interviews were done in two ways, focus groups and individual interviews. For younger children, researchers used a storyboard with felt pieces and hospital play sets. The children were encouraged to use the felt pieces to tell a four part story about: being in the hospital, going home, going back to school, and returning to the hospital for a check up.

"This interviewing method worked well for younger children who created detailed stories of their experiences But we discovered that the storyboard method was less effective for children 10 years and older. While it helped them focus on their hospital experiences, they didn't interact with the storyboard in the same way the younger children did. They would handle the felt pieces, and simply tell their story as we changed the storyboards," says Dr. Rennick.

Dr. Rennick believes this child friendly, self-report questionnaire will allow health care workers to more effectively determine if children are bouncing back after an intensive care unit stay. "With this new scale we will be better able to pick-up and help the child whose life simply hasn't returned to normal."

Dr Janet E. Rennick is a Nurse Scientist in the Department of Nursing at the Montreal Children's Hospital, an investigator with the Research Institute of The Montreal Children's Hospital of the ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ Health Centre, and an Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing at ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ. She holds a New Investigator Award from Sick Kids Foundation/IHDCYH*-CIHR National Grants Program. *Institute of Human Development, Child and Youth Health (IHDCYH)

The study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

Find this press release, with the original article and a short audio document by following this link :

The Montreal Children's Hospital (MCH) is the pediatric teaching hospital of the ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ Health Centre and is affiliated with ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ. The MCH is a leader in providing a broad spectrum of highly specialized care to newborns, children, and adolescents from across Quebec. Our areas of medical expertise include programs in brain development/behaviour, cardiovascular sciences, critical care, medical genetics and oncology, tertiary medical and surgical services, and trauma care. Fully bilingual, the hospital also promotes multiculturalism and serves an increasingly diverse community in more than 50 languages. The Montreal Children's Hospital sets itself apart with its team approach to innovative patient care. Our health professionals and staff are dedicated to ensuring children and their families receive exceptional health care in a friendly and supportive environment.

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The Research Institute of the ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ Health Centre (RI MUHC) is a world-renowned biomedical and health-care hospital research centre. Located in Montreal, Quebec, the institute is the research arm of the MUHC, the university health center affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine at ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ University. The institute supports over 600 researchers, nearly 1200 graduate and post-doctoral students and operates more than 300 laboratories devoted to a broad spectrum of fundamental and clinical research. The Research Institute operates at the forefront of knowledge, innovation and technology and is inextricably linked to the clinical programs of the MUHC, ensuring that patients benefit directly from the latest research-based knowledge. The Research Institute of the MUHC is supported in part by the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec. For further details visit: .