The power of listening in a pediatric intensive care unit in Ceará: practice of the rapport technique in escorts

Abstract

When a child is hospitalized in a pediatric intensive care unit, the parents, especially the mothers, because they more frequently accompany children, must be taken into consideration in the care provided by nursing professionals. Such an attitude favors adaptation of the mothers, who often feel anxious, fragile, and impotent in the situations they face. This work reports the experience of Nursing academics in the pediatric intensive care unit of a teaching hospital in the northern region ofCearáState, where the Rapport technique was used during the period from February to March 2019, involving ten meetings in this pediatric intensive care unit. Once a week, the team met the mothers who accompanied their children, with the meetings always performed according to the following group organization procedure: icebreaker, intervention, and evaluation. The aim of the Rapport technique is to connect the participants, so the academics maintained an attentive and empathetic approach, focusing on real problems, in order to make the encounters effective in assisting the target public. In the first meeting, the team was presented to the group of mothers, followed by the dynamic icebreaker session and then a more informal conversation. The participants felt free to recount their life stories, talking about their weaknesses and what they would like the team to take on board to be considered in the next meetings. The main themes addressed were self-care, hope, and stress. Throughout the meetings, the team was attentive to each report, listening to the informants and seeking to obtain their confidence. At the end of the meetings, it was evident that the links that had been created extended beyond the encounters, since the participants got to know each other by name and learned new characteristics from each other. The chosen methodology met the expectations of both the team and the group. It proved to be valuable considering both the moment of diagnosis and the subsequent implementation of the nursing process. The actions were supported by evidence-based practice, consequently contributing to both the academic community and society as a whole.