Abstract:

Background: Parents and adults have the intense natural love to their children, this love makes the them to experience anxiety and panic attack when the child become critically ill. these feelings found to vary with age, sex and social economic status in different studies. With lack of study in sub–Saharan Africa this study aimed to study the predictors and level of stress among parents and care givers of children admitted at ICU.

Objectives: This study aimed to find out the prevalence of predictors of stress among caretakers whose patients are admitted to the pediatric ICU at BMC.

Methodology: A cross section study involving parents and caregivers of children admitted to ICU will be conducted by using random sampling with questionnaires contain questions whose content will use to judge the personal stress level.

Results: A total of 123 caregivers with children admitted in PICU were recruited into the study. Among them 102(83%) were females. Most of the study participants 68(71%) had extreme stress, about 15(19%) of care givers were very stressful while 8(10%) of care givers reported to have no experiencing any symptom/ sign of stress.

Conclusion: This study found extreme stress among caregivers of children admitted in PICU at BMC to be high. This is predicted by using personal stress scale.

Recommendations: We recommend more research involving multiple centers and follow up of such people after discharge. Also, we recommend that a program be developed to support such caregivers in order to reduce their level of stress so that they can provide optimal care and support to the admitted children.