Social Work and the Acute Psychosocial Care of Families in Pediatric Resuscitation Settings: A Single-Site Clinical-Data Mining Study

ABSTRACT

Purpose

Family attendance in pediatric resuscitation situations is currently accepted practice within modern emergency departments. The support of these families has become a key area of practice for emergency department social workers. However, there is limited evidence to guide acute psychosocial care of families who find themselves in these situations.

Method

This practice-based research project used a clinical data-mining methodology. Descriptive and inferential analyses of the demographic characteristics and documented psychosocial care needs of 1123 families whose child were cared for in a major pediatric hospital resuscitation area was undertaken, with particular focus on available social work referral and intervention data.

Results

Results included family demographic, psychosocial care need and the social work role information. We identify factors impacting on family care needs, social work intervention and service pathways for this population.

Conclusion

A skill set for social work clinicians working in pediatric emergency resuscitation settings is proposed.

KEYWORDS:

• Emergency department
• pediatric social work
• family
• acute psychosocial care
• resuscitation

Acknowledgments

AMM acknowledges the supervision provided by LJ, EO and RG. This study is undertaken as part of a larger PhD project with the support of the Australian Commonwealth Government Research Training Program, there was no other funding source for the project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Due to the nature of this research and methodology used, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available outside of the RCH and UM.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Commonwealth Government Research Training Program.