This study explored how families of children being treated for cancer maintain their family unity throughout this painful experience. The purpose was to contribute to nursing´s under-standing of the subjective experience of families and thus to further the development of nursing science to guide practice with families in this difficult situation.
The sample consisted of 27 families of children ranging in age from one to fifteen being treated for cancer as outpatients at three university hospitals in Seoul. They had been diagnosed for at least six. Months and having active treatment.
Data were collected during clinic visits or at home by an interview schedule based on Martinson´s research and used previously with families in Taiwon and the U. S. A. Informanis included parents(mostly mothers), grand-mothers, siblings and the children themselves.
The Meaning of the Illness
Parents perceive cancer as the most frightening illness and relate it to death. They believe their child will recover, but when they see other children dying, they fear their child, too, might die. They cannot conceive of any experience in life more difficult than their present experience of having a child with cancer. They blame themselves for their child´s illness : they feel they did not take care of their child well enough.
How They Tell the Painful News
The parent to first hear the diagnosis from the doctor shared the painful news immediately with their spouse and with the child´s grandmother. Some parents told the sick child the diagnosis using the word cancer : some gave partial or indirect information : some gave false information. However, some children themselves told the investigator they know they had cancer. Parents tpld older siblings the correct diagnosis to alleviate jealousy on the part of siblings aged six to 15 feeling neglected, and to engage the help of siblings over 15 years of age.
Sharing the Pair.
Three circles of support energed from the data. The inner circle consisted of the spouse, the grandmothers and the other children. In this circle the parents could express their anger, could quarrel with and blame another or neglect another´s feelings and could weep. In the middle circle were other relatives, friends, neighbors, other patients´ parents and members of the same religious group.
The parents shared information about their child´s treatment and received comfort but could not express their anger with these supporters. Parents tended to ascribe the cause of their child´s illness to misfortune or to God and shared their feelings about this with members of their faith.´ Their religious activity tended to increase as they appealed to the deity for healing.
The outer circle consisted of health professionals. The parents did not expect emotional support from doctors, only their medical expertize. But from nurses, parents expected expert care, information and explanations, emotional support and painless intervention. Parants wanted nurses to care not only for their child but also for the whole family.
These data manifest a challenge to nurses to enter into the pain suffered by the family to help strengthen the family unity. The nurse should become part of the inner circle for the family, sharing their pain.
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