Purpose
To explore nurses’ perceptions of end-of-life care in neonatal and pediatric intensive care units, focusing on the components, facilitators, and challenges of such care in daily practice.
Methods
A qualitative descriptive study was conducted. Data were collected from June to October 2023 through semi-structured individual interviews with 17 nurses from the neonatal and pediatric intensive care units of four tertiary general hospitals in a metropolitan area of South Korea, and were analyzed using thematic analysis techniques.
Results
We identified three themes and nine subthemes: (1) supporting families’ emotional and relational closure, (2) perceiving relational and systemic support as enabling end-of-life care, and (3) feeling constrained by systemic and practical challenges. Participants perceived fostering an emotional connection with the child, ensuring opportunities for meaningful farewell, and supporting emotional acceptance of death as ways to support families’ emotional and relational closure with their child. Although relational and systemic support, such as collaborative teamwork, clear communication, shared planning, and structured tools, enabled compassionate care, participants also felt unprepared, burdened by heavy workloads, and hindered by environmental barriers.
Conclusion
The findings highlight that delivering quality end-of-life care in neonatal and pediatric intensive care units requires supporting families’ emotional needs, strengthening relational and systemic support, and addressing practical challenges. Further research is needed to develop and test practical strategies (e.g., specialized education in compassionate communication, standardized protocols, and supportive care environments) that can improve the quality of end-of-life care for neonatal and pediatric patients and their families.

Purpose
The purpose of this study was to investigate how pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) nurses and the mothers of hospitalized children perceived their partnership and identify the detailed differences in the common domains of partnership between them.
Methods
A qualitative descriptive design with semi-structured and open-ended interviews was used. Interviews with mothers of hospitalized children and nurses in the PICU were conducted at a national university hospital in South Korea.
Results
Five integrated categories were identified concerning nurses' and mothers' perceptions of partnership. Five common domains were derived by merging the partnership categories perceived by each PICU mother and nurse: expectation of trust, sharing and communication, participation in care, equality in the relationship, and coordination of opinion However, there were significant differences in the composition of the categories of these common domains.
Conclusion
These results may facilitate more effective partnerships between parents and PICU nurses. Efforts should be taken to promote the formation of trust between nurses and parents and create an environment that is conductive to regular open communication in particular, steps should be taken to reduce gaps in awareness concerning this partnership and information sharing, nursing methods, and decision-making.

Citations

• Experiences of trust in mothers of hospitalized children toward pediatric nurses
  Mi-Ra Kim, Sun-Mi Chae
  Journal of Child Health Care.2025; 29(2): 368.     CrossRef
• Exploring ‘family’ in paediatric intensive care family-centred-care research: A concept analysis
  Ashleigh E. Butler, Elizabeth Bichard, Kate Masterson, Jessica Appleyard, Efa Apriyanti, Nega Degefa Megersa, Claire Collins, Stephen McKeever, Joseph C. Manning, Sarah E. Seaton
  Intensive and Critical Care Nursing.2025; 88: 103972.     CrossRef
• Estrategias de humanización en cuidados intensivos pediátricos: una revisión de alcance
  María Esther Salgado-Reguero, Sara Furtado-Eraso, Arantxa Bujanda-Sainz de Murieta, Cristina García-Vivar, Nelia Soto-Ruiz, Paula Escalada-Hernández
  Enfermería Intensiva.2025; 36(2): 500531.     CrossRef
• Topics and Trends in Neonatal Family-Centered Care
  In Young Cho, Cho Hee Kim
  CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing.2025;[Epub]     CrossRef
• Humanization strategies in pediatric intensive care: A scoping review
  María Esther Salgado-Reguero, Sara Furtado-Eraso, Arantxa Bujanda-Sainz de Murieta, Cristina García-Vivar, Nelia Soto-Ruiz, Paula Escalada-Hernández
  Enfermería Intensiva (English ed.).2025; 36(2): 500531.     CrossRef
• Associations Between Care Environments and Environmental Modifications in the Daily Living Settings of Children with Medical Complexity
  Yumi Mizuochi, Yukako Shigematsu, Yoshitomo Fukuura
  Nursing Reports.2025; 15(11): 400.     CrossRef
• Implementation of a partnership involving parents in the care of critically ill children: an integrative review
  Tuti Seniwati, Nani Nurhaeni, Dessie Wanda
  Acute and Critical Care.2025; 40(4): 521.     CrossRef
• Effectiveness and family experiences of interventions promoting partnerships between families and pediatric and neonatal intensive care units: a mixed methods systematic review
  Shannon Barnes, Ibo Macdonald, Zahra Rahmaty, Véronique de Goumoëns, Chantal Grandjean, Cécile Jaques, Anne-Sylvie Ramelet
  JBI Evidence Synthesis.2024; 22(7): 1208.     CrossRef
• Pediatri Hemşireliğinde Aile ile İletişim
  Dilara Aydın, Emine Efe
  Türkiye Sağlık Bilimleri ve Araştırmaları Dergisi.2024; 7(1): 12.     CrossRef
• Exploration of trust between pediatric nurses and children with a medical diagnosis and their caregivers on inpatient care units: A scoping review
  Lyndsay Jerusha MacKay, Una Chang, Elizabeth Kreiter, Emma Nickel, Janice Kamke, Rubinder Bahia, Sarah Shantz, Heather Meyerhoff
  Journal of Pediatric Nursing.2024; 78: e1.     CrossRef
• Voice of the nurse in paediatric intensive care: a scoping review
  Kate Masterson, Michael Connolly, Denise Alexander, Maria Brenner
  BMJ Open.2024; 14(12): e082175.     CrossRef

The purpose of this study was to reveal what influences the divergent methodological researches have brought the nursing practice in during the past 3 decades. The nursing record sheets ie, the nursing discourses were analyzed to know the knowledges that were recorded, accepted and communicated in nursing practice at pediatric intensive care units, and unclosed the philosophical and methodological position of that knowledges. The texts were 13 sheets, 3 kinds of nursing record(7 24hours flow charts, 4 nursing information record sheets and 2 transfer record sheets) used at 4 hospitals. The unit of analysis was 'word'. First, all words of the sheets were listed up, clustered into categories based on their contents. And then, the larger conceptual themes were drawn to elucidate the effect of the knowledge/power and the philosophical and methodological position of that knowledges. To enhanced the validity of the analysis, the data were analyzed by two researchers. The 'words' were classified into 3 categories; 'general information', 'assessment' and 'intervention'. The conceptual themes of the texts were 'the gaze for quantification and objectification' and 'technical/assimilated caring'. This themes reflected the logic positivistic and biomedical view that had dominated at clinical practice. Nursing has endeavored to resist the logic- positivistic knowledge/power and to established the nursing knowledge/power based on multiple philosophies and methodologies, especially phenomenological-interpretative. But the results of this study revealed that such efforts in nursing theory and research couldn't influenced the knowledge of practice. Logic positivism was yet so strong and the biomedical model yet dominated in the clinical practice. It identified that the borrowed theory and the knowledge from the received view gave nursing the power. But they were modalities that reinforced the dominant, medical power. Nursing has investigate the other positions (feminism, Habermas' critical social theory and Foucault's discourse theory). This positions suggest different assumptions but share the common concepts; equality, emancipation and freedom. The important point is how make these concepts the practical for nursing knowledge/ power in practice. We must recognize that the praxis at clinical setting take place at the field unlike theoretical praxis. The change of clinical practice is the social, economic and political change.