Anlysis of Fatigue Perceived by the Hospitalized Children's Mother.

Park, In Sook; Kim, Shin Jeong; Kang, Kyung Ah; Kim, Tae Hee; Park, In Sook; Kim, Shin Jeong; Kang, Kyung Ah; Kim, Tae Hee

Original Article

Korean Journal of Child Health Nursing 2004;10(1):80-88.

In Sook Park, Shin Jeong Kim, Kyung Ah Kang, Tae Hee Kim

¹Department of Nursing, ChungNam University, Korea.
²Department of Nursing, Hallym University, Korea. kimsj@hallym.ac.kr
³Department of Nursing, SamYook University, Korea.
⁴College of Medicine, Pochon CHA University Bundang CHA General Hospital, Korea.

Abstract

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to explore the fatigue of the mothers of the hospitalized children's mothers in descriptive study. METHOD: Two hundred eighty three mothers who take care of the hospitalized children in three University hospitals were enrolled from June, 1 to October, 30, 2003. Data were collected using a questionnaire titled "Symptom Table on Fatigue Perception" designed by the Fatigue Research Committee of Japan, consisted of a total 30 items categorized into three sub-dimensions: the physical, the psychological and the neuro-sensory. SPSS was used for the analysis of data with 0.05 of significance. RESULT: 1) The mean average fatigue score of subjects was 1.94(SD:.48): the physical fatigue revealed the highest value with a mean of 2.19(SD:.57), followed by psychological fatigue with a mean score of 1.85(SD:.52), neuro-sensory fatigue with a mean of 1.79(SD:.51). 2) With the respect to the general characteristics of hospitalized children and mothers, there were statistically significant differences in the mothers' fatigue perception by the child sex(t=-2.697, p=.008), the character of child(F=9.032, p=.000), the child condition compared to pre-hospitalization(F=3.523, p=.031), with or without support in domestic households(t=-1.981, p=.049), the amount of sleeping time(t=2.704, p=.007), and with or without of night-time sleep disturbance because of the child hospitalization(t=2.082, p=.038). CONCLUSION: These results suggest that health care professional need to be aware of the persistent presence of the maternal fatigue related to the child hospitalization and the factors worsen the degree of the fatigue.

Key words: Fatigue; Hospitalized children; Mother