Nursing care for adolescent with cerebral palsy in their activities of daily living

Abstract

 When children with cerebral palsy arrive at adolescence, joint deformation such as arthrogryposis appears due to the physical growth associated with the secondary sex characteristics, and physical strength gradually declines with secondary disorders. To better understand this, the study here aimed to determine how nurses involved in activities of daily living of adolescents who are hospitalized in long-term wards with cerebral palsy, using the ethnographic nursing research approach of Leininger. The results identified four themes and one major theme. Nurses assist adolescents even if ‘it is a movement the adolescents can do by themselves’ by assessing timing, to help the adolescents maintain the movement acquired in the growth process as long as they are able to, while protecting their self-esteem. When adolescents maintain silence, nurses reserve ‘time to communicate in speaking’. This is assumed to be a unique aspect of the nursing because it is nursing of adolescents with cerebral palsy who live in a world where they cannot move as they wish due to the paralyzed body.