Providing situational information
| Honest information on the border of hope and hopeless | “In the first days, everyone [healthcare providers] told us that my child was fine, then suddenly he died and they said that his heart was stopped. I said that you said it was good, but now what happened…” M5 “We have to talk between the border of hope and hopeless. We have to say the positives and the negatives of the points. We should not be too hopeful and not too disappointed …” N1 “Do not provide false information and tell the truth. For example, my child had a seizure. They [healthcare professionals] should not say do not worry, it was nothing. I knew my child had a problem” F7 “I knew my child was not well, but I did not like to be constantly disappointed. I was afraid to call the ward because I was afraid that they [nurses] would say that my child was very ill, or I would enter the ward in fear” M2 |
| Providing information with apathy | “One of them (a doctor) said very badly to his mother(the participant’s wife)that this child of yours is like this, you have to get used to her [child]. If you can't hold her, take her to Welfare” F7 “I had so much pain, but I did not think about myself. I was anxiously requesting information about my baby’s condition, and I was constantly asking what happened to my child? Do not let him get cold. They [nurses] said that we know our work, please do not interfere” M5 |
| Providing information as individual | “… I have not studied medicine to know. If they had given me this information in simple language so that I could understand it, it would have been very good. I did not understand what they [healthcare professionals] told me” F7 “We really needed someone to explain my child’s situation to me. Well, I was somewhat familiar with English terms. If someone explained it to me, I would understand because I am also a language teacher and translator” F3 “When I was at the beginning of my career, I was talking with a father using scientific terms about his child’s condition. I had not finished my explanation yet; I saw he was angry and said ‘Do you make fun of me?’ …" D13 “… Slowly with the introduction, perhaps our audience (the mother herself) might not be strong enough to endure. When one of the nurses was providing bad information about my child, in the middle of her conversation, I did not understand what happened to me, as the world was ruined on me … When I opened my eyes, I saw the doctor and the nurses and my husband around me…” M4 “Young parents have no responsibility at all and do not seem to understand or care about it at all. These parents are not the decision-makers themselves, and the grandparents are the decision-makers” N2 “Linguistic differences may make it difficult to explain. For example, the language of parents may be Kurdish and they do not know Persian. In these cases, we look for personnel who are at least fluent in the parent language and try to provide information to parents through them” D9 “Families who come to the emergency room frequently ask questions. I can’t completely answer their questions and need to repeat the information because they are so anxious, and they can’t understand” N5 “A person should speak to them [parents] calmly, respectfully, and in their own language. But often it does not work. When parents are very agitated, I go forward to talk to them, but I see that it gets worse, and they are aggressive and told me ‘What are you doing? You go and do your work”’ D8 |
| Dualism in blaming | “I asked the doctors: ‘Could the flu kill a healthy child in a week because my daughter didn’t have a problem before?’ They said it was probably because your daughter didn’t feed on your breast milk and you fed her with dry milk and you gave birth to her by cesarean section …. (The mother did not continue, she sighed and then cried)” M6 “I tried to make sure she [the mother] didn’t feel guilty. I said to her that she wasn’t the only person who experienced the accident and it could happen to anybody” N1 |
| Assurance to parents | “The opinion of the doctor who spoke to us was that they [other doctors] should not operate at all: ‘They took your child to the operating room to look for where the problem was. What do you expect from a one-and-a-half-kilogram child?” M10 “Before, in the emergency room, everyone was talking to the parents(nurse, intern, resident, etc). Everyone was asking the parents what happened and why did you bring the child to the emergency room? Also, parents’ questions were answered in different ways, and it caused the parents to become agitated. But since we managed this situation, the pediatrician or senior resident is in the emergency room, and this has reassured the parents that there is someone who can manage the team” D12 |
| Presence of parents to better understand the child’s situation | “A child was hospitalized. His parents were not present at the bedside of the child. When I saw that the child was getting worse, I called his parents to come to see their child. I think this caused the parents to have readiness for the resuscitation crisis of their child” N2 “I was always in the hospital with my child. Before she died, the nurse called me and said, ‘Your child is in critical condition and her blood pressure is constantly dropping. She is not well at all” It was good to be able to be with her at the last moment and say goodbye to her” M6 |
D, doctor; F, father; M, mother; N, nurse.