Original articleDynamic coping behaviors and process of parental response to child’s cancer☆
Section snippets
Patient population and participants
Eligible participants of this study were primary caregivers of children diagnosed with cancer, under 18 years old at the time of diagnosis, who had stayed on the pediatric oncology ward of a Children’s hospital, Taiwan. According to Yeh and colleagues (2000), participants with children at different stages of illness had different responses. For example, a parent of a newly diagnosed patient needs to deal with a series of treatments, which is different from that for a patient who is diagnosed in
Findings
“Coming to terms” is the core construct of the parental reaction to caring for a child with cancer over the illness trajectory. Endurance was first observed in parents when the diagnosis was confirmed. It refers to the parents’ ability to care for their child in the face of tremendous distress. This multifaceted, dynamic process could be elicited by the diagnosis of an illness or by a change in the child’s clinical status. Five distinct components of the coping process of caregiving for the
Discussion
“Coming to terms” emerged from the data to represent the Taiwanese parental coping process of caring for a child with cancer. This process is dynamic, multifaceted, rapidly changing, and ongoing. It consists of parental coping patterns and ways of handling stress. Similar to previous studies Enskar et al 1997, Groothenhuis and Last 1997, Hinds et al 1996, Strauss and Corbin 1990, parents experienced the most emotional distress when a cancer diagnosis or a change in a child’s condition was
Acknowledgements
Special thanks go to Jia-Ling Tsai and Chiou-Fen Li for help with data collection; Wenjun Li and Claire Baldwin for their assistance preparing the manuscript.
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Supported by a grant to Dr. Yeh from Chang Gung University, Taiwan, Republic of China (CMRP865).