Abstract
Objectives: This study is aimed at obtaining suggestions related to nursing practice by elucidating the process through which nurses’ reflections contribute to caregiving to children who require developmental support and their parents.
Methods: We conducted semi-structured interviews with nurses who tend to children requiring developmental support; the results were analyzed using a modified grounded theory approach.
Results: Nurses provided care by “understanding and supporting children based on their developmental characteristics” and “respecting parents and drawing out their strengths.” These practices were motivated by “the need to obtain knowledge for practices,” “visualizing the difficulty faced by parents,” and “focusing on children,” which stemmed from “reflections about the relationship between one’s personality or experience and ‘children and their parents” and “reflections based on one’s
character.
Conclusion: Our findings suggest that reflections enabled nurses to acknowledge the common points shared between them and patients, note the tendencies that they are prone to, and understand their strengths and weaknesses. By accepting their own reflections, nurses were able to provide care by focusing on patients’ needs.
