Development of the parental needs scale for rare diseases: a tool for measuring the supportive care needs of parents caring for a child with a rare disease.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Children and families affected by rare diseases have received scant consideration from the medical, scientific, and political communities, with parents' needs especially having received little attention. Affected parents often have limited access to information and support and appropriate health care services. While scales to measure the needs of parents of children with chronic illnesses have been developed, there have been no previous attempts to develop a scale to assess the needs of parents of children with rare diseases.

Objective

To develop a scale for measuring the supportive care needs of parents of children with rare diseases.

Method

A total of 301 responses to our Parental Needs Survey were randomly divided into two halves, one for exploratory fac

SUBMITTER: Pelentsov LJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5024776 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature