An Exploration of the Impact of Childhood Life Limiting Illness on Health Care Practitioners and Their Coping Strategies

Abstract

Health care practitioners working with children with life-limiting conditions inevitably experience multiple traumatic and difficult situations throughout their careers. Their ability to cope with these experiences is vital to maintaining resilience when practicing in the field. Using a Narrative Inquiry approach, one-on-one interviews were conducted with 6 health care practitioners working with children with life-limiting illness within the IWK Children’s Hospital in Halifax, NS. Their experiences on the job and reactions to difficult experiences were explored and coping strategies examined. Similar to the current literature, the findings of this study suggest that health care practitioners experience several different reactions to grief, and cope in a number of different ways. This research contributes to a growing body of literature on the experiences of health care practitioners working with children with life-limiting illness and providing exploration into their ability and processes to cope and maintain resilience in the field.