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Pediatric Nurses’ Experiences in Refugee Children Care: A Qualitative Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2025

Aslihan Güney Open the ORCID record for Aslihan Güney [Opens in a new window] ,
Duygu Sonmez Düzkaya Open the ORCID record for Duygu Sonmez Düzkaya [Opens in a new window]  and
Gülzade Uysal Open the ORCID record for Gülzade Uysal [Opens in a new window]
Aslihan Güney*
Affiliation:
Prof. Dr. Cemil Tascioglu City Hospital, Pediatric Ward, Istanbul, Türkiye
Duygu Sonmez Düzkaya
Affiliation:
Faculty of Health Sciences, Nursing Department, Tarsus University, Mersin, Türkiye
Gülzade Uysal
Affiliation:
Faculty of Health Science, Nursing Department, Sakarya University of Applied Science, Sakarya, Türkiye
*
Corresponding author: Aslihan Güney; Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Objective

Communication is one of the main foundations for providing nursing care. Due to intercountry mobility, nurses encounter communication barriers with patients and their families, such as language and sociocultural differences.

Methods

This study was conducted to investigate the experiences of pediatric nurses in caring for refugee children. The phenomenological study was conducted between November 2023 and February 2024 with 16 pediatric nurses working in the inpatient wards of Istanbul Prof. Dr. Cemil Tascioglu City Hospital Pediatrics Clinic who agreed to participate in the study. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews and voice recordings. After the interviews were transcribed, the MAXQDA 2022 program was used for coding, creating themes, and analyzing the relationship between codes and sub-codes.

Results

The nurses revealed themes of the care process, difficulties related to the patient, communication methods, risks in patient safety, feelings experienced about the ineffective communication, and suggestions. The main codes obtained from the themes were loss of time, difficulties in communication and training, difficulties arising from cultural practices, using body language, wrong practices regarding patient safety, sadness and fatigue experienced when there is no communication, and the need for learning Turkish.

Conclusions

The pediatric nurses had problems with communication and felt sadness about caring for refugee children. The problem of loss of time in giving care due to language and sociocultural differences, and the suggestion of learning Turkish as the solution come to the fore. It is necessary to carry out comprehensive research on this subject.

Keywords

communication barriers (MeSH: L01.143.230)nursing care (MeSH N02.421.533)refugees (MeSH: M01.755)pediatric nursing (MeSH: G02.478.676.631)
Type
Original Research
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 19 , 2025 , e96
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc

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