Ilyas N, Iram M, Jafri Sa.
Psychosocial need of parents who have a child with cancer: a challenge for pediatric oncology nurses.
Biomedica Jan ;32(2):122-7.

Background and Objective: Parenting a child with cancer is a painful experience. Parents of these children use information to know about the disease and they need support from health care providers to deal with their stresses. The literature has not clearly identified the role of pediatric oncology nurses in providing information. The aim of this article was to conduct a comprehensive review of the literature to explore psychosocial needs of parents who have a child with cancer and identify the role of pediatric oncology nurses to comply with their needs. Methods: The review was conducted systematically by using Academic Search Complete, Cochrane, CINAHL, Ovid, PubMed, and Google scholar. The search was undertaken using key words child, cancer, parents, information, and support in combinations using Boolean operators (AND). Results: Thirty five articles found to search the evidence, all articles topics matched, but did not exactly meet the criteria. There were only seven studies that fulfilled the criteria and also provided a global view of literature. Three used quantitative methods, three used qualitative methods and one used mixed method. All studies examined the psychosocial needs of parents and found information need as primary outcomes. The Critical Appraisal Skills Program (CASP) tools were used to check the quality of papers to ensure that the findings were applicable to practice. Conclusion: Nurses can contribute to the care of a child suffering from cancer by providing correct and adequate information to their parents. But the complexity of the disease and advancement in treatment place many challenges for nurses. There is a great need of continued professional education for pediatric oncology nurses to meet these challenges and to provide evidence – based care.

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