Children and young people’s experience of source and protective isolation while in hospital: A naturalistic inquiry.

This document presents the ongoing work and preliminary findings in the study entitled “The child’s experience of single room isolation whilst in hospital”. It will specifically present the work undertaken during the academic year 2012-2013, during which The Florence Nightingale Foundation and The Menat Trust provided a scholarship.

The Department of Health document ‘Saving Lives’ (2007) identifies the necessity to enhance clinical care for patients cared for in isolation. In hospital children are sometimes nursed in a single room for the purpose of infection prevention. Adult literature suggests patients may experience loneliness, depression, and feelings of stigma when in isolation. It is unknown if this is true for children as there is very limited research related to this topic, and the research available concentrates on specific conditions and not from the child’s viewpoint.

The aim of the study is to explore the experiences of children and young people nursed in single room isolation while in hospital, using the child’s experiences and the parental and staff perspectives of the child’s experience.

This study uses a qualitative methodology and philosophy of social constructivism. A naturalistic inquiry is used to explore children and young people’s experiences of isolation. Children and young people aged 6-17 years have been recruited since February 2011. This study began by using a contemporaneous video diary method to document their time in isolation and participate in a video stimulated recall interview after discharge. Video data provides an insight into the life of the participants without the obtrusive nature of an observer, which gives a richness and complexity to the data. However this method only recruited two children to the study and therefore alternative methods were sought and currently a retrospective interview method is used with children, parents and staff caring for children in isolation whilst in hospital. Ethical approval was granted for this amendment during this academic year and therefore although it was anticipated data collection would be completed during this academic year, it will require a final 9months to complete data collection. The interviews use a semi-structured approach to allow the children to describe their experience and allow the researcher to gain meaningful data. There are a number of methodological and ethical findings that will be presented in this document as a commentary on the video diary method in addition to the findings from the study.

Data collection using the interview method is ongoing and will be completed by September 2014, however from initial themes have been derived from the data. Preliminary findings suggest positive and negative aspects of the experience of isolation and include the themes  boredom, facilities, environment, impact of the staff, we must stay in one room, privacy, family, psychological impact, social contact and isolation rules. The preliminary findings from the data will be presented in this document. Understanding children’s experiences of isolation will help to inform future services and ultimately aims to reduce the psychosocial impact of isolation.