Parents, especially mothers, of critically ill children in the intensive care unit (ICU) report heightened levels of stress and are at greater risk of psychological illness after the child’s ICU stay. Therefore, supportive interventions for parents of critically ill children often focus on identifying stressful triggers and promoting effective coping skills. Importantly, research in non-ICU populations suggests that individual coping styles differ among various racial/ethnic groups. For example, African Americans may tend to use more religious and emotion-focused coping, whereas non-Hispanic Whites rely more on acceptance. Unfortunately, it is unclear how racial/ethnic differences relate to psychological distress among parents of critically ill children—with some studies highlighting no racial/ethnic differences and others reporting higher levels of psychological morbidity among African Americans. Guided by the Multicultural Model of Stress, this study examined racial/ethnic differences in mothers’ ICU-related stress experiences, their coping behaviors, and subsequent psychological distress while adjusting for socioeconomic factors and the moderating role of race/ethnicity on the relationship between coping and distress.This quantitative, cross-sectional, self-report survey study comprised 103 mothers of critically ill children (<18 years) who were unexpectedly admitted to a pediatric ICU (PICU) or cardiac ICU (CICU) for the first time. The investigators included mothers who could read and write English or Spanish in the study. Eligible mothers completed electronic surveys that captured ICU-related stressors, coping behaviors, and acute psychological distress. The majority (58%) of the sample was Hispanic, with the remaining participants identifying as non-Hispanic White (26%) or African American (16%). The mothers’ average age was 33 years; the majority (58%) were married and living in a 2-parent household (79%). The authors reported no statistically significant racial differences in ICU-related stressors; however, they found that African American mothers used more avoidance-related coping techniques than Hispanic and non-Hispanic White mothers used. In addition, Hispanic mothers reported less distress than African American and non-Hispanic White mothers reported. Finally, the authors found that race/ethnicity was a significant moderator of the relationship between ICU-related stressors and emotion-focused coping, as well as the relationship between emotion-focused coping and psychological distress. Given these findings, the authors recommend future exploration of coping’s influence on psychological outcomes among various racial/ethnic identities in mothers of critically ill children.Mary E. Ernst, PhD, APRN, the lead author for this article, provides additional information about the study. A major inspiration for this work was her clinical experiences working with parents of critically ill children: Therefore, she began to research ways to formalize how parents are oriented, educated, and supported in the ICU. She explains, “I found that most studies involved primarily White parents. I worked in Miami, where White parents were in the minority. I couldn’t find a study that had a sample that came close to the diversity of families I was working with and that concern[ed me].” She also recognizes the timeliness of this work: “Racial inequities in health care … have been a focus in recent years. I felt it important to include race/ethnicity as a variable in my study because I feel that it has a very real impact on all aspects of an individual’s life, including how they are cared for and how they manage with a child in the ICU.”Thus this work was completed as part of Dr Ernst’s PhD dissertation. She acknowledges her dissertation chair, Dr Jessica Williams, for her relentless support: “She challenged me, guided me, and kept me on track—literally setting up weekly meetings with me to hold me accountable.” Dr Ernst also notes that support from professional organizations, in the form of grants, helped her “provide a token of thanks” to the mothers for “generously sharing their experiences.” The project did present some challenges, including the process for getting approval from the institutional review board, which she says was difficult, “especially for a nurse researcher from outside the organization.” In addition to bureaucratic barriers, Dr Ernst acknowledges one barrier that we all may relate to: “A challenge for me trying to publish my research was ‘life.’ When I completed my dissertation and PhD, I had an ill parent I needed to care for, moved, and got a new job. My priorities had shifted.” Fortunately, she says “[I] had friends who would not let me forget my goals.”Dr Ernst advises novice researchers about what to consider when building a research team: “I think choosing people on your team with different expertise, skill sets, and knowledge is critical; they have to be able to see the project from a variety of perspectives, to help you identify issues and work out the kinks as you go, instead of having to change things, or to have things come up that you didn’t think about. I was also fortunate to be able to go back to the organization and colleagues that I had worked with over the course of my career to get assistance in navigating the details of my project. I think having people on your team who are as passionate and committed to the project as you are is critical, especially when challenges arise.”Dr Ernst is optimistic that this work can improve bedside critical care practice by “(1) focusing on what mothers with children in the ICU experience, (2) educating nurses on what they can do to minimize negative mental health outcomes that mothers at the bedside are at risk for, (3) encouraging other researchers to investigate this topic in the context of the stress and coping process, so that positive and negative coping behaviors can be supported or extinguished so that outcomes improve, (4) encouraging more diversity in sampling to reflect the changing demographics of the United States, and (5) focusing efforts on mothers identified at the bedside as needing support, so that they have the help and resources that they need after they go home.” At a minimum, she wishes this work to serve as a “springboard for future research.”This feature briefly describes the personal journey and background story of the EBR article’s investigators, discussing the circumstances that led them to undertake the line of inquiry represented in the research article featured in this issue.Mary E. Ernst, PhD, APRN, has been a pediatric nurse for more than 30 years: “From a young age, I was interested in caring for people and learning about the body, so nursing seemed like a natural fit.” She started her career in medical/surgical care areas before moving to the pediatric CICU. She eventually progressed to nursing education and then became the nursing director of a pediatric ICU before she returned to school for a PhD. She is a strong advocate for using clinical experiences as motivation for research. But perhaps more importantly, she shares: “To persist with research you have to be passionate about the topic you are focused on and believe in the importance of what you are doing. Research can be a challenging and tedious process, one in which you have to rely on others to achieve your goals, so it’s important to research a topic you care deeply about to be able to stay with it for the long haul.”