Support provided by nurses to parents of hospitalized children - cultural adaptation and validation of Nurse Parent Support Tool and initial research results.

INTRODUCTION: Child's illness and hospitalisation are difficult and stressful situations both for the patients themselves and for their parents. Supporting the ill child and their guardians is an indispensable element of caring for ill children. The Nurse-Parent Support Model developed by Margaret Miles is based on four elements, namely emotional support, appraisal support, informational support and instrumental support.

AIM: The aim of the research was (i) cultural adaptation and validation of The Nurse-Parent Support Tool into Polish and (ii) initial assessment of parents' perception of nursing support given to the parents of children hospitalised in five paediatric wards in Poland.

MATERIAL AND METHOD: Quantitative cross-sectional study was conducted in a group of 195 parents of children hospitalised in five different hospital wards in eastern Poland.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Theoretical validity of the four-factor version of NPST is proved by the correlation matrix analysis and inter-correlation between the dimensions of the described tool as well as the analysis of the internal structure of the test verified on the basis of its internal validity which also confirms its reliability. However, theoretical validity of the test is not confirmed by the factor analysis whose results indicate that the tool encompasses two factors that explain 58.5% of variances. Respondents rated instrumental support provided by the nurses the highest, appraisal and informational support were rated slightly lower, and emotional support was rated the lowest. Negative correlation between the level of stress and emotional support (r = -0.35), informational support (r = -0.29) and support in general (r = -0.30) was demonstrated. Polish four-factor version of NPST is recommended only for international comparative analyses, whereas the use of two-factor version of NPST is recommended for national research programmes. The level of support given to the parents of children hospitalised in Poland seems to be unsatisfactory.