Implications for practice and research

• Family-centred care should not be restricted to paediatric nursing or limited to adult patients’ nuclear family. Whenever appropriate, the needs of adult patients’ parents should be looked after.

• Tactful assessment of the concerned parents to acknowledge the suffering they are enduring and their emotional interconnectedness with their sick child provides emotional support to them.

• Longitudinal studies are recommended to follow through older parents’ experiences at different points of the disease trajectory of their child to enhance understanding of the transformational process of a parent’s role and position in facing an adult child with …