Abstract
Abstract : The critical care nurses’ training, which is regulated by R.212, includes an additional qualification; “medical surgical: critical care nursing” (SANC, 1993:R.212). The newly qualified critical care nurses had no previous exposure to theoretically and clinically nursing paediatric cardiac patients. Caring for post-cardiothoracic surgery paediatric patients demands specific skills and theoretical knowledge of physical and physiological structures of congenital cardiac diseases as well as holistic caring. The purpose of the study was to gain an understanding of the lived experiences of newly qualified critical care nurses in caring for post-cardiothoracic surgery paediatric patients in a private hospital in Gauteng. Based on the results of their lived experiences, recommendations were formulated to support newly qualified critical care nurses in optimising quality care for post-cardiothoracic surgery paediatric patients. A qualitative, exploratory, descriptive and contextual research design was used, and a descriptive phenomenologcal approach was used. The population was the newly qualified critical care nurses who have being caring for post-cardiothoracic surgery paediatric patients in a specific paediatric cardio-thoracic intensive care unit in a private hospital in Gauteng, for more than six months but not more than one year. Purposive sampling was used, and data were collected through in-depth, individual interviews until data saturated occurred (at the sixth interview). The research question was: what are the experiences of the newly qualified critical care nurses caring for post-cardiothoracic surgery paediatric patients? The researcher used Giorgio’s method of data analysis which involves five steps (Giorgi, 2012:3-12). The findings revealed three themes: an overwhelming stressful environment, uncaring relationships, the participants experienced the nursing to be entirely different from nursing adult cardiac patients, and they experienced a great need for supervision and training. Keywords: Caring, Critical care nurses, Experiences, Paediatric Cardio-thoracic Intensive Care Unit, Paediatric patients.
M.Cur. (Community Nursing Sciences)