It is important not to ignore the impact of parental cancer on children, and this is where oncology and palliative care nurses can play a key role, providing support to parents as a regular aspect of oncological nursing care.
This study explored the experience, needs, and confidence of nurses working in acute cancer services when supporting parents with cancer who have dependent children.
Two focus group interviews were conducted with oncology and palliative care nurses in 1 acute hospital trust in the south of England.
Nurses described how they identified with their patients as a parent themselves. This identification with patients added to the emotionally charged context of care and resulted in nurse avoidance of the troubling issue of dependent children. Nurses identified the importance of peer support with regular opportunities to reflect on practice when dealing with issues relevant to parents and children.
Oncology and palliative care nurses take a reactive approach to family centred care, taking their cue from patients to initiate or request support for their children.
Guidance was needed on children's developmental stages and how to communicate with children of different ages. In addition, guidance was needed on assessing family needs and access to up to date resources. To enable nurses to engage with the issue of children, strategies of peer support and further educational opportunities need to be implemented.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 18 April 2019.
All research outputs
#24,763,244
of 34,372,222 outputs
Outputs from Cancer nursing (Online)
#968
of 1,880 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#259,180
of 370,670 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Cancer nursing (Online)
#16
of 31 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,372,222 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 19th percentile – i.e., 19% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,880 research outputs from this source. They receive a mean Attention Score of 3.4. This one is in the 41st percentile – i.e., 41% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 31 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 38th percentile – i.e., 38% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
