Nursing interventions to enhance coping in parents of children with cancer

Survival rates for childhood cancer have now reached over 70 percent and caringfor a chronically ill cancer patient imposes a host of long-term stressors for parents.Although these stressors vary over time, they can be categorized as those that parentsexperience at the time of diagnosis, during developmental transitions, that are relatedto the ongoing health care needs of their child; and as their child experiences illnessexacerbations and hospitalizations.There has been a plethora of studies whose purpose was to describe the needsand stressors of parents of children with chronic illnesses but there is a paucity ofintervention studies designed to enhance coping in this populations. This article willreview the intervention studies performed on parents of chronically ill children withcancer including disease specific educational interventions, stress point interventions,problem-solving skills training, educational-behavioral interventions, and other strategiesto enhance coping in this group. This review will also delineate a complete nursingassessment guide for evaluation of parents of children with chronic illnesses or cancerand will describe the theoretical framework for this assessment and the subsequentintervention for parents of children with childhood cancer.