Feeling states: a new approach to understanding how children and adolescents with cancer experience symptoms.
Children with cancer experience short- and long-term symptoms. The symptoms can escalate child and family suffering and impact on their quality of life. Children's perspectives of their cancer symptoms have been increasingly investigated; however, there is still much more to be learned from children with cancer. Accordingly, a qualitative study that sought to arrive at an interpretive description of children's and adolescent's perspectives about their cancer symptoms was conducted, with a focus on exploring what children and adolescents with cancer think and feel about their cancer symptoms. Open-ended individual interviews were conducted with 13 children and adolescents with cancer. The patients ranged in age between 9 and 17 years. Data were analyzed by the constant comparative method of data analysis. Five themes emerged from the data: (1) It is all together, (2) Shared and unique ways of feeling, (3) I am feeling this way because..., (4) Feelings about my feelings, and (5) It is hard to explain. The findings reinforce that children have a lot to tell us about how cancer makes them feel but may have difficulty communicating how they feel to nurses and other healthcare providers.
Woodgate
Roberta Lynn
RL
Faculty of Nursing, Helen Glass Centre for Nursing, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Roberta_Woodgate@umanitoba.ca
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D036301:Qualitative Research