Objective: To identify parents' opinion of the quality of medical information and the quality of care in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). MATERIAL Y METHOD: We designed a structured survey to gather data on the characteristics of information given to parents, parents' dealings with the unit's staff and resources for parents. This survey was carried out by means of personal direct interviews with the parents of 61 children admitted to our PICU from November 2003 to March 2003.
Results: Most of the parents (90.2 %) reported that the information they received was of good quality, whereas 3 % did not receive any information at all and 8 % only once. A total of 83.6 % were satisfied with the unit's staff, whereas 50.8 % pointed out at least one deficiency in the PICU resources available for families. Eighty-seven percent of the parents wanted more time to be with their child in the PICU. Eighty-four percent of parents reported that they had been particularly worried in one or more occasion during their child's stay in the PICU and 47 % would occasions liked to have received some type of psychological help.
Conclusions: In our PICU the parents of admitted children were satisfied with the quality of information and the unit's medical staff. Nevertheless, we identified some features that could be improved such as the information provided in the first few hours of admission, visiting time schedules, psychological support and the unit's infrastructure.