Kristie Ross, MD, Co-Medical Director of the CTSC Trial Innovation Network , is part of a research team at the CWRU Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing that has recently received a $2.2 million grant to study how parents can best deal with the stress of caring for children who must survive on medical technological equipment, such as feeding tubes and ventilators.
The four-year grant comes from the National Institute of Nursing Research, a division of the National Institutes of Health. Because parents provide most of the at-home care for tech-dependent children, they often suffer critically and chronically from the adverse health effects of the associated stress, according to a news release.
Researchers believe it is among the first randomized controlled clinical trials to include objective measures of sleep and stress patterns, as well as track emergency room and hospital visits, for these parents, according to a news release. Through the study of 200 parents, some will have access to a range of web-based tools to improve coping skills to manage stressful situations around caring for their child.