The Impact of Chronic Illness on Children and their Families

아동의 만성질환이 환아 및 환아 가족의 일상생활에 미치는 영향

The aim of this descriptive study was to identify the impact of chronic illness on children and their families. Mothers of 177 children with chronic disease were recruited from aged one to 17 years hospitalizing the pediatric nursing unit at one university hospital. 28 questions. a self-complete maternal questionnaire developed by researchers based on literatures and 'The Impact of Childhood Illness Scale' (Hoare & Russell, 1995) assess four aspects of the child's and family's lifestyle with two dimensions for each question. the frequency of the problem and its importance of concern that it cause. In the data analysis. Pearson correlation coefficients and analysis of variance were used to test any association and a statistical comparisons. between individual variables and the impact on child's and family's lifestyle. The results were as follows: 1) There were the higher mean scores on the importance dimension than on the frequency dimension on total impact on child's and family's lifestyle. On the importance dimension. mothers had much higher levels of concern about impact on child's development and adjustment among subscales. On the frequency dimension, mothers had much higher levels of concern about impact on the family daily living on subscales. 2) The impact on child's and family's lifestyle related on individual variables were: (1) On the importance dimension. there was statistically significant low in the impact on child's development and adjustment among subscales in older parent group compared with it of younger parent group. (2) On the frequency dimension. there were statistically significant high in the impact on child's development and adjustment among subscales in the children with leukemia or cancer compared with it of the other children who had another chronic illnesses. And there were statistically significant high in the impact on child's development and adjustment among subscales in less than high school educated mothers compared with it of mothers who was educated college level. (3) On the frequency dimension. There were statistically significant high in the impact on family's daily living among subscales and total impact on child's and family's lifestyle in female children. (4) There was positive correlation between impact on parents daily living and frequency of child's hospitalization on the frequency dimension. but there was negative correlation between the two variables on the importance dimension. (5) There was positive correlation between impact of chronic illness and its treatment and duration of child's hospitalization on the frequency dimension. In conclusion. these results were reflected by the high level of concerns about impact on child's development and adjustment although mothers had frequently responded about the impact on the family daily living. We suggest consistent intervening program that help the family empowering to make children live with and adjust to their chronic illnesses from the point of diagnosis and after discharge from the hospital. We also suggest these results can be utilized as a useful data in the practice of home health nursing for children who have chronic illnesses and their families.