Pediatric critical care nursing researchpriorities — initiating international dialogue

Objective: To identify and prioritize research questions of concernto the practice of pediatric critical care nursing practice.Design: One-day consensus conference. By using a conceptualframework by Benner et al describing domains of practice in criticalcare nursing, nine international nurse researchers presented stateof-the-art lectures. Each identified knowledge gaps in their assignedpractice domain and then poised three research questionsto fill thatgap. Then, meeting participants prioritized the proposed researchquestions using an interactive multivoting process.Setting: Seventh World Congress on Pediatric Intensive and CriticalCare in Istanbul, Turkey.Participants: Pediatric critical care nurses and nurse scientistsattending the open consensus meeting.Interventions: Systematic review, gap analysis, and interactivemultivoting.Measurements and Main Results: The participants prioritized 27nursing research questions in nine content domains. The top fourresearch questions were 1) identifying nursing interventions thatdirectly impact the child and family’s experience during the withdrawalof life support, 2) evaluating the long-term psychosocialimpact of a child’s critical illness on family outcomes, 3) articulatingcore nursing competencies that prevent unstable situations fromdeteriorating into crises, and 4) describing the level of nursing educationand experience in pediatric critical care that has a protectiveeffect on the mortality and morbidity of critically ill children.Conclusions: The consensus meeting was effective in organizingpediatric critical care nursing knowledge, identifying knowledgegaps and in prioritizing nursing research initiatives that could beused to advance nursing science across world region