1Doctoral student, Graduate school of KyungHee University 2Department of Nursing, Kyungki Junior college 3Department of Nursing, KyungHee Junior college of Nursing 4Department of Nursing, College of Medicine, KyungHee University
Abstract
The purpose of study was : 1) to analyze the trend of research on the family with chronically ill children in Korea, 2) to suggest direction for future study on the family with chronically ill children, and contributing to the use of intervention in family nursing practice. Research studies on the family with chronically ill children were selected from the Korean Nusre, the Korean Nurses' Academic Society Journal, and from dissertations, which were conducted between 1975 and 1995. The total numbers of the studies were 35. These studies were analyzed for 1)time of publication or presentation, 2)research design, 3)characteristics of subjects, 4) type of chronic disease, 5)main concepts, 6)measurement tool, 7) the sis for a degree or nondegree, 8) result of correlational studies. The findings of the analysis were as follows : 1) The numbers of studies on the family with chronically ill children have increas rapidly the early 1990's. In research design, the numbers of survey research studies were the highest. Especially, the most frequently research design was the correlational survey. There were 19 correlational studies(25.7%) during the early 1990's. 2) The subjects in 16 studies(45.7%) were mother of chronically ill children and, in 8 studies (22.9% ) were their parents. 3) In most types of chronic diseases, there were 14 hematooncologic disease(32.6%) and 14 hadicapped children (32.6% ). 4) Frequently used research concepts were stress, degree of coping or way of coping, social support, parents' support, family functioning, intensity of family and family adaptation. 5) Acceding to the results of correlational studies, the more family stress was higher the more degree of coping, family functioning, intensity of family and degree of family adaption was lower. The more degree of social support was higher the more stress was lower and degree of coping, family functioning and intensity of family was higher. The more family functioning was higher the more intensity of family and family adaptation was higher. 6) 24 researches on the family with chronically ill children were done for a thesis for a degree and 11 were nondegree research studies. The following suggestions are made based on the above findings : 1) The pattern of these studies related to the family with chronically ill children in domain of Nursing need to be compared with trend in other domains. 2) More replicated research on the family with chronically ill children is needed to develop family nursing intervention and prove the effect of that and more qualitative research on the family with chronically ill children is needed to comprehensive indepth the family with chronically ill children. 3) Further research on the family with chronically ill children is needed to verify subjects and type of chronic disease, develop applicable measurement tools in Korea and identify relation between other concepts. 4) Family nursing researchers should make an effort to apply research result in various clinical settings and community settings, and try to carry out not only team research with clinical nurse but also other multidisciplinary researcher related to the family.