Pediatric and neonatal intensive care hospitalization as traumatic stressor: implications for intervention

Abstract

A substantial literature documents the psychological, medical, and economic benefits of attending to the emotional needs of parents whose children are hospitalized on the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) or neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Synthesizing the PICU/NICU literature with current findings from the field of psycho-traumatology, the author addresses PICU/NICU hospitalization as a potential traumatic stressor for families of hospitalized children and considers that intensive care clinical staff are vulnerable to symptoms of primary and secondary traumatic stress as well. Guidelines are offered for recognizing, managing, and increasing resiliency to the symptoms of normal traumatic stress responses in both families and intensive care staff.