Risk and Protective Factors for Burnout Among Parents of Children With Complex Care Needs: Parents' Perspectives.
Nathalie J S Patty, Karen M van Meeteren, Minke Verdonk and 3 others
PMID 40704533WHAT IT FOUND
Parents of children with complex care needs described burnout as building from many pressures: care bureaucracy, poor support, guilt, perfectionism, financial strain, and no option to stop caring.
Some said they felt protected by asking help, setting boundaries, and seeing their situation as stable.
Key findings
01Parents described burnout as arising from an accumulation of interacting factors, not a single cause.
02Poorly organised health and social care, including fragmented services and complex bureaucracy, was described as a major burden.
03Receiving practical and emotional support, and well-organised care, were described as protective.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The parents were self-selected: they had interest and ability to talk about burnout, and very overwhelmed parents may not have taken part. Parents who did not identify with or recognise the word burnout were excluded, so the themes may miss parents who experience similar strain without using that label. The study was done with Dutch-speaking parents in the Netherlands, so findings may not fit other health systems, cultures, or expectations of parenting. The Parental Burnout Inventory was validated in parents of children without complex care needs, so its scores here may not have the same meaning in this group. The study reports perceptions, not tested effects of any treatment or service change.
Declared interests
Funding: Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development and Stichting Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek’s Heeren Loo. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these themes as evidence that any intervention prevents parental burnout. They are parents' perceptions from a Dutch sample, and the study did not test causes or treatments.