Parent empowerment in chronic illness: a nursing perspective

Parent empowerment is upheld as a creative strategy to provide a family centred approach in chronic illness care. Empowerment equips parents to voice their concerns, priorities and goals of care among service providers and find some structure to their ever changing lives. However identifying and measuring parent empowerment practices are ambiguous probably due to the subjective nature of the concept. This work discusses the nurses’ perceptions about parental struggle in chronic illness such as understanding the child’s condition, negotiating a plan of care, monitoring and managing symptoms and coping with the changed family routines. An atmosphere of trust, open communication, shared decision making, support and parental readiness to accept their child’s care leads to parent empowerment. Nurse’s role is identified as an advocate for the child and the family and, as a front-line worker who fill the gap between parent and the multidisciplinary team. This inquiry brought more conceptual clarity to parent empowerment and has empirical importance in the current, changing context of chronic disease management.