| The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe the experience of parenting foster children with chronic illness and complex medical needs. The research question was: What is the essence of parenting a chronically ill foster child with complex medical needs?;Van Marten's (1990, 1998) interpretive phenomenological approach was used to explore the experiences of 13 foster parent participants from rural areas of Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania. Van Manen's method includes the exploration of artistic sources such as music, poetry, and works of art to aid in the interpretation and description of findings.;An unstructured interview guide was used to obtain data. Interview data revealed that parenting foster children with chronic illness and complex medical needs is a multifaceted phenomenon. Twenty meaning units emerged and were grouped into seven theme clusters after which the theme clusters were raised to a higher level of abstraction to yield five essential themes. The seven theme clusters abstracted from the twenty meaning units were: Choosing to Foster Parent, Caregiving, Effective Interventions, Ineffective interventions, The Relinquishment Experience, The Near Death/Death Experience, and Self. The five essential themes were: Committing to Parenting a Foster Child with Chronic Illness and Complex Medical Needs, Coming to Know the Needs of a Medically Complex Foster Child, Intervening, Sensing the Loss of a Foster Child, and Becoming. Essential themes and those aspects of essential themes that were previously identified in the empirical, contemporary, and theoretical literature along with those themes that were newly emerging were discussed. |
