Janet E Rennick

• RN, MScN, PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Montreal Children's Hospital; McGill University Health Centre; McGill University

Objectives: To report the 3-year follow-up results of the "Caring Intensively" study, which examined children's psychological and behavioral responses after PICU hospitalization. Design: Prospective mixed methods, concurrent triangulation design. In the quantitative arm, study group (SG) and comparison group (CG) children and their parents were...

Background The COVID‐19 pandemic led to widespread adoption of virtual communication platforms. Virtual study visits were implemented in the pilot cluster randomized trial (CRT) stage of Teen Adherence in KidnEy transplant Improving Tracking To Optimize Outcomes (TAKE‐IT TOO). The present study aimed to understand study coordinators' perspectives o...

Introduction As paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) mortality declines, there is growing recognition of the morbidity experienced by children surviving critical illness and their families. A comprehensive understanding of the adverse physical, cognitive, emotional and social sequelae common to PICU survivors is limited, however, and the trajector...

Background: Parents of children with CHD face several barriers when trying to access the services needed to support their child's development. In fact, current developmental follow-up practices may not identify developmental challenges in a timely manner and important opportunities for interventions may be lost. This study aimed to explore the per...

Introduction Advances in medical technology and postoperative care have led to increased survival of children with medical complexity (CMC). Parents of CMC develop substantial caregiver expertise and familiarity with paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) staff and treatment procedures which may give rise to tensions regarding respective roles, care...

Background: Youth with congenital heart disease (CHD) are at high risk for a range of developmental impairments that become evident at different times across childhood and adolescence. This study aimed to explore the experiences, needs and preferences of youth with CHD with respect to their developmental follow-up across childhood. Methods: Inte...

Background Developmental follow-up is central to the timely identification of delays in at-risk children. Throughout Canada, data are currently lacking on the follow-up of children with congenital heart disease (CHD) after open-heart surgery. The objective of this study was to describe current Canadian developmental follow-up practices and to explo...

Objectives: To describe the reasoning processes used by pediatric intensivists to make antibiotic-related decisions. Design: Grounded theory qualitative study. Setting: Three Canadian university-affiliated tertiary medical, surgical, and cardiac PICUs. Patients: Twenty-one PICU physicians. Interventions: None. Measurements and main result...

Introduction: PICU hospitalization can have a profound impact on child survivors and their families. There is limited research on children's long-term recovery within the context of the family following critical illness. This study aimed to explore children's and parents' perceptions of long-term psychological and behavioral responses within the co...

Objectives Primary objective of this pilot study is to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of the NeuroN‐QI and the study procedures. Secondary objectives are to assess the feasibility and acceptability of the NeuroN‐QI by the nurses, assess the nurses’ training needs about the components of the NeuroN‐QI, and estimate the preliminary effect...

Context: With improvements in survival rates in newborns with congenital heart defects (CHDs), focus has now shifted toward enhancing neurodevelopmental outcomes across their life span. Objective: To systematically review the prevalence and extent of motor difficulties in infants, children, and adolescents with CHD requiring open-heart surgery....

Medication non‐adherence is an important factor limiting allograft survival after kidney transplantation in AYA. Some interventions, including the TAKE‐IT, showed some success in promoting adherence but the potential for scalability and use in routine clinical practice is limited. We applied user‐centered design to gather the perspectives of recipi...

Introduction Annually in the UK, 20 000 children become very ill or injured and need specialist care within a paediatric intensive care unit (PICU). Most children survive. However, some children and their families may experience problems after they have left the PICU including physical, functional and/or emotional problems. It is unknown which chil...

Purpose: Methotrexate (MTX) is a disease modifying anti-rheumatic drug commonly used to treat children with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA). Unfortunately, half of children taking MTX will experience MTX intolerance, which includes distressing gastrointestinal and behavioural symptoms associated with weekly MTX treatment. This qualitative stud...

Background: Children with medical complexity (CMC) account for an increasing proportion of pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) admissions across North America. Their risk of unscheduled PICU admission is threefold compared to healthy children, and they are at higher risk of prolonged length of stay and PICU mortality. As a result of their sophist...

Background Sisom is an interactive computerized tool shown to improve communication between children with cancer and their clinicians in Norway. Concerns that Sisom may prompt disclosure of potentially distressful symptoms during a busy clinical day may deter implementation in practice in other settings. Aim The purpose of this study was to descri...

Objective: Over the past 20 years, there has been a growing interest in the psychosocial outcomes of children and adolescents born with a congenital heart defect (CHD). This systematic review and meta-analysis aims to appraise and synthesize current literature on the psychosocial outcomes of children and adolescents with severe CHD. Methods: A s...

Objective: Sisom is an interactive computer software program that allows children to rate the severity of their cancer symptoms. The study objectives were to describe the usability of Sisom in terms of ease of use, usefulness, and aesthetics and to offer suggestions for improvement. Method: A multisite, descriptive study was conducted to describ...

Objectives: To examine the feasibility and acceptability of a PICU Soothing intervention using touch, reading, and music. Design: Nonblinded, pilot randomized controlled trial. Setting: The PICU and medical-surgical wards of one Canadian pediatric hospital. Patients: Twenty PICU patients age 2-14 years old and their parents, randomized to an...

Context: Over the past several decades, advances in pediatric critical care have saved many lives. As such, contemporary care has broadened its focus to also include minimizing morbidity. Post-Intensive Care Syndrome, also known as PICS, is a group of cognitive, physical and mental health impairments that commonly occur in patients after intensive...

Objectives: The aim of this study was to explore nurses' perceptions of caring for parents of children with medical complexity [CMC] in the pediatric intensive care unit [PICU]. Research methodology: An interpretive descriptive design was used to explore nurses' perceptions of caring for parents of CMC in the PICU. Semi-structured interviews wer...

Sisom is an interactive tool designed to help children communicate their cancer symptoms. Important design issues relevant to other cancer populations remain unexplored. This single-site, descriptive, qualitative study was conducted to linguistically validate Sisom with a group of French-speaking children with cancer, their parents, and health care...

Background: Experienced pediatric nurses caring for increasingly sick and vulnerable children on medical and surgical units may be at particular risk for work-related stress. In view of their positive impact on quality of care, and the fact that they are particularly difficult to retain, it is imperative to understand the work-related stressors th...

Background: Little is known about the influence of cancer on the adolescent's developing self-identity and social relationships as he/she transitions back to school following cancer treatment. Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore the meaning of returning to school for adolescents who have completed cancer treatment. Methods: In...

Background: Children with congenital heart disease (CHD) who undergo cardiac surgery are hospitalized in a paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) prior to being transferred to a surgical ward. This is a challenging transition for parents of children with CHD who experience high levels of stress related to their child's illness. Aim: To explore pa...

Over the last 3 decades, mortality rates of children admitted to PICUs in North America have declined significantly.1 By this measure alone, PICUs have been extremely successful, offering children the best possibility for survival and recovery after life-threatening trauma and illness. Yet as mortality rates have declined, the PICU patient populati...

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2431/14/276 Pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) hospitalization places children at increased risk of persistent psychological and behavioral difficulties following discharge. Despite tremendous advances in medical technology and treatment regimes, approximately 25% of children demonstrate negative psychological a...

Objectives: Inferring the pain level of a critically ill infant is complex. The ability to accurately extract the appropriate pain cues from observations is often jeopardized when heavy sedation and muscular blocking agents are administered. Near-infrared spectroscopy is a noninvasive method that may provide the bridge between behavioral observatio...

In this three-phase exploratory study, we used participatory approaches with youth in a small Canadian province. Through iterative focus groups in school settings, we examined young men and women's perspectives regarding factors important to taking control of their sexual health behaviour. Youth aged 15–17 discussed sexual health through role-play,...

Due to the subtlety or absence of predictable, objective signs of pain in critically ill infants, health care professionals must often rely on observations of behavioural or nonspecific physiological signals. Although parameters such as heart rate or blood pressure could be regarded as relatively more objective or quantifiable measures than behavio...

The objective of this randomized controlled trial was to test if parents' participation in an intervention based on an empowerment ideology and participatory experiences decreased the number of cigarettes smoked in homes. Sixty families were randomized to the intervention (n = 30) or control (n = 30) group. The intervention included three weekly gr...

The purpose of this study was to explore parents' perception of the parental role in a tertiary care Canadian university affiliated hospital's paediatric intensive care unit (PICU). A descriptive interpretive design was used with a purposive heterogeneous sample to reflect the range of children and parents normally admitted to the PICU. Semi-struct...

Parents consistently express a desire to support their child and retain a care-giving role in the paediatric intensive care unit (PICU). Qualitative data gathered as part of a PICU intervention study were analysed to explore mothers' experiences using a Touch and Talk intervention to comfort their children during invasive procedures. To describe ho...

Encouraging youth voice, visibility, and active participation in adolescent-related research is strongly advocated in the literature. In this article, we describe how participatory approaches informed by arts-based methods (e.g., reflective writing, dramatization) were used with adolescents to enhance the research process in an exploratory study de...

Critically ill children are at risk for psychological sequelae following pediatric intensive care unit hospitalization. This article reports on the psychometric testing of the first self-report measure of psychological distress for 6-12-yr-old children post-pediatric intensive care unit hospitalization: The Children's Critical Illness Impact Scale....

To examine the effects of a parent book reading intervention in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) on parent-infant interaction and on the incidence of parents reading to their infants 3 months post-NICU discharge. A nonrandomized, participant blinded intervention study using a historical control group (CG) was conducted. The intervention grou...

Despite abundant evidence about the adverse effects of secondhand smoke exposure on children's health, few reports describe barriers and facilitators encountered by parents in making their homes and vehicles smoke-free. This article describes perceptions of barriers and facilitators to making homes and vehicles smoke-free among 36 parents with a ch...

With advances in pediatric health care, many adolescents with complex chronic neurological conditions live well into adulthood. As such, the movement toward adult health care services is an expected and desired outcome of pediatric care. When the young adult has an intellectual impairment in addition to a complex chronic neurological condition, par...

The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to test an intervention on the use of music during simple laceration repair to promote parent-led distraction in children aged 1 to 5. Children's songs were broadcast via speakers during laceration repair and parents were encouraged to participate in distracting their child. The proportion of parenta...

The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to test an intervention on the use of music during simple laceration repair to promote parent-led distraction in children aged 1 to 5. Children's songs were broadcast via speakers during laceration repair and parents were encouraged to participate in distracting their child. The proportion of parenta...

A systematic review of published research on children's psychological outcomes following Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) hospitalization was conducted. Of the 275 papers published between 1970 and April 2008 which were identified using keywords, reference lists and one author's collections, a total of 28 papers met the inclusion criteria for t...

The objective of this systematic review was to identify questionnaires that measure health-related empowerment in adults or families and demonstrated the best evidence of reliability and validity. A search of nine data bases identified 8,269 abstracts that referred to empowerment. Full article review was completed for abstracts that met the inclusi...

With the evolution of pediatric critical care medicine has come an awareness of the ethical imperative of healthcare professionals to attend to the psychological sequelae of technologically intensive care. Recent attempts to measure psychological outcomes in these children have been limited. The purpose of this study was to develop a measure of pos...

BACKGROUND: Studies suggest that despite sedation, hospitalized children in Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) still experience pain from procedures, with lasting consequences. Parental distracting talk, as opposed to empathic talk, appears to be useful in decreasing the child's distress behaviors, although physiological data were only reported i...

Children with chronic pain meet numerous healthcare professionals during their search to understand their pain. Through semi-structured interviews, this qualitative study sought to understand the experiences of five children with chronic pain as they encountered healthcare professionals. In the majority of these interactions, children reported feel...

Pain in children is infrequently assessed and managed by nurses. One-on-one coaching based on audit with feedback and the use of opinion leaders have been effective in changing professional health care practices. Coaching by an opinion leader for changing pediatric nurses' pain practices was tested in a clustered randomized trial in six Canadian pe...

A quasi-experimental, pretest/posttest study was conducted to explore nurses' perceptions of the impact of the 15-minute family interview on the pediatric hospital admission process. The intervention consisted of two in-depth teaching sessions, and hands-on coaching in the use of the 15-minute family interview. Each of the 6 nurses was interviewed...

There are few studies that focus on children's subjective responses to home ventilation and how this in turn affects their daily lives. This multiple case study explored the experience of home ventilation from the children's perspective. Data were collected from five children through observation and audiotaped interviews. Children expressed their p...

OBJECTIVE: To argue that that there has been a remarkable absence of discussion of the importance of parental love in the pediatric intensive care literature, and that this silence has been to the detriment of both medical and nursing pediatric intensive care practice. CONCLUSIONS: Research and anecdotal literature to date have focused on the negat...

Objective: The growing shift toward home care services assumes that "being home is good" and that this is the most desirable option. Although ethical issues in medical decision-making have been examined in numerous contexts, home care decisions for technology-dependent children and the moral dilemmas that this population confronts remain virtually...

The shift toward providing technologically complex care at home implies an assumption that “being home is good” – that this is the most desirable option. The aim of this study was to conduct an empirical analysis of the moral experience of families with children requiring assisted home ventilation. Twelve families (39 family members) were recruited...

A major focus of clinical nurse specialist nursing practice is the integration of research findings into practice. The purpose of this study was to describe strategies used to facilitate research utilization (RU) by nurses in a practice setting. This multiple-case study identified the strategies that clinical nurse specialists and master's degree-p...

Acts of kindness and commemoration by staff members often follow the death of a patient. Acts include attending funerals, sending sympathy cards, sending cards on birthdays/anniversaries, telephoning/visiting family homes, and attending memorial services. This study explores the significance of these acts for bereaved parents. Twelve parents whose...

The purpose of this multiple-case study of research utilization (RU) was to examine whether and how nursing practices in acute-care units are built on research and to identify potential explanations for the observed patterns. Open-ended data were collected from staff nurses and nursing leaders on 8 acute-care units through interviews and observatio...

We hypothesized that warm infusion solution should be used for urodynamic studies in children because it more closely simulates normal physiology. Thus, we conducted a prospective randomized study comparing consecutive room temperature (RT) and body temperature (BT) cystometrograms (CMG) in the same child. Subjects underwent identical CMGs using RT...

To identify those patients in a pediatric intensive care unit who may be at highest risk for developing persistent psychological sequelae after hospital discharge. A secondary data analysis was conducted to examine data gathered in an earlier study of children's psychological responses after critical illness. The current study focused exclusively o...

We compared the results of 2 cystometrograms (CMGs) performed during a single session in the same child to determine the variability between consecutive cystometries. Subjects underwent 2 consecutive bladder fillings performed at the same rate and position. Maximum cystometric bladder capacity (CBC), pressure at CBC, leak point pressure, maximum fl...

Parents of children with severe and intractable epilepsy face profound caregiving challenges, dealing with their child's frequent and intense seizures, accompanying physical, social and psychological problems, and ongoing quest for seizure control through a variety of medications, diet and surgery. With the advent of a new, surgical treatment for e...

With advances in technology, children with chronic illnesses are surviving longer. This improved survival rate has resulted in a growing population of families caring for their children with complex needs at home. This grounded theory study explored how caring for a child who requires home ventilation affects family members. Families moved through...

Children hospitalized in pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) are subjected to highly invasive interventions necessary in overcoming the critical period of their illness, yet little is known about their subsequent psychological adjustment. The purposes of this study were to compare the psychological responses of children hospitalized in a PICU wi...

The profile of the acutely ill child and family has undergone dramatic changes in recent years. Advances in medical technology have substantially altered the life-death trajectory for ill children and their families; however, they have also left families to endure increasingly difficult situations with uncertain outcomes for prolonged periods of ti...

When a child is admitted to an Intensive Care Unit, parents are forced to abdicate their roles as primary caregivers and to adopt the new roles of parents to an acutely ill child. The changes that they are expected to adjust to are immense. An understanding of role theory and the development of the parental role increases the nurse's ability to und...

Children who are hospitalized in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) are subjected to a barrage of highly invasive, often painful interventions necessary in overcoming the critical period of their illness. While the majority of these children survive, little is known about the impact of critical illness on their subsequent psychological adjustme...