Impact of childhood cancer on healthy school-age siblings.
One part of a study on the effects of childhood cancer on families focused on the emotional reactions of school-age siblings. The authors identify themes in the siblings' feelings taken from transcripts of interviews with them. Responses were categorized as experience of diagnosis and hospitalization; awareness of prognosis and mortality; need for information; continuing effect of disease or death on the well child; correct understanding of cancer; and hopes and desires for the future. The responses were grouped either in a sibling with a living child category or sibling with a deceased child category. From their analysis, the authors present implications for nurses' interactions with these children: children's need for information; their feelings of being displaced and unimportant; need for encouraging involvement in the life of the ill child. The authors also identify additional questions that could direct future nursing research.
Martinson
I M
IM
Department of Family Health Care Nursing, School of Nursing, University of California, San Francisco 94143-0606.
Gilliss
C
C
Colaizzo
D C
DC
Freeman
M
M
Bossert
E
E
D000328:Adult; D001293:Attitude to Death; D001294:Attitude to Health; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005190:Family / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D007406:Interview, Psychological; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy; D010353:Patient Education as Topic; D011379:Prognosis; D012801:Sibling Relations