Background/Aims: Fifteen% to 20% of the people in vegetative state were completely conscious (Monti et.al, 2010; Cruse et.al, 2011). Seventeen (39%) of 41 patients presumed to be in VS/UWS were found to be at least minimally conscious, and the active involvement of patients’ proxies and staff enriched the assessment (van Erp et.al,2015). Although objective methods (ex. f-MRI, EEG) to detect consciousness has been developed, these objective data cannot tell us how caregivers should read slight movements of severely brain injured children. And then, due to a severely brain injured child’s slight movements with poor reproducibility, “sharing” caregivers’ experiences was necessary to read the child’s slight movements (Kameda & Suzuki, 2018). In this research, we aimed to describe the significance of discussions to share caregivers’ experiences in the process of seeking how caregivers read severely brain injured children’s own will/thought through their slight movements.

Methods: Six severely brain injured children (1 to 10 years old; Their brains were injured at 1 day-old to 3-year-old due to cerebral hypoxia and epilepticus) and their over 77 caregivers (families, nurses, pediatrician, teachers, etc.) participated in our research. Data was obtained by 61 3-4hr observation sessions by the side of each child and 5 15-45 minutes group interviews. We focused on sharing and discussing caregivers’ experiences. These data were interpreted by using phenomenological hermeneutic approach (van Manen,1990)

Results: Five themes emerged as significance of discussing care for severely brain injured children among caregivers and a researcher. One caregiver said, “when I answered that I am aiming to give each child normal daily life in the care, you asked me what the normal daily life is. At that time, I really could not explain it. So, I asked other staff, but everyone could not explain like me”. 〈Recognition of experiences is buried in the care〉 and 〈Trying to verbalize of caregivers' experiences〉 were occurred. Discussions were occurred not only group interviews and observation sessions but also at rest time with/without a researcher. As the result of these discussions 〈Increasing attention to severely brain injured children〉, 〈Experiencing together to read slight movements of the children〉 were occurred, and these themes led to 〈Understanding other caregivers’ interpretation〉 about readings of children's slight movements. As the result, there were some changes. The biggest change was, a mother who used to visit her child only 1 time/ month changed to every day and played with her child by reading her child’s slight movements.

Conclusion: Our results recommends that researchers go into the wards in hospital and institution for facilitating sharing and discussing caregivers’ experiences which were not treated enough in the medical situation due to their subjectivity.

The significance of discussing caregivers’ experiences which were not treated enough in the medical situation due to their subjectivity: In the process of seeking how caregivers read severely brain injured children’s own will/thought