Background: The nursing profession is in its developing stages in the country yet when it comes
to the work itself, the environment can be very competitive. Though nurses, in general, go
through a tough time, it is the intensive care unit nurses who have to be on their tip toes all the
time. Amongst those are the ones who work in the pediatric department, in which the patient is
young and requires constant supervision and care compared to other intensive care units.
Purpose: The aim of the current project was to explore the experiences and coping of nurses
working in pediatric intensive care unit in governmental hospital of Lahore, Pakistan.
Method: Semi structured in depth interviews were conducted with 5 nurses who were working
in pediatric ICU in a government hospital. All the nurses were female.
Results: The data was managed and analyzed using NVivo 12 version. The 4 superordinate
themes vocational problems, psychological problems, biosocial problems and coping had 11
master themes and 70 sub themes.
Conclusion: Nurses in PICU face a lot of troubles in their everyday life yet they have found
their own ways to cope with their routine stress. Regardless the shortage of staff and constant
complaints against them, nurses of PICU find solace in religious coping and socialization (as
much as they can get). These results will help authorities to look into the problems and provide
suitable solutions.
Key words: Pediatric intensive care unit, nurses, government hospital, coping, phenomenology
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