Nurses' Experiences of Caring for Children with Cancer: A Descriptive Phenomenological Study

To describe the essential structure of pediatric oncology nurses' lived experience of caring for children with cancer and to clarify how emotional involvement, professional meaning, contextual constraints, and personal-life spillover are integrated in that experience.

A descriptive phenomenological study guided by Giorgi's approach was conducted with 11 pediatric oncology nurses from a specialized oncology hospital and a central hospital in Northern Portugal. Data were collected through face-to-face semistructured interviews and analyzed using Giorgi's four-step procedure. Interviews and analysis were conducted in Portuguese; quotations selected for publication were translated into English and checked for conceptual and semantic equivalence.

The essential structure of the experience was sustained relational presence under emotional and contextual pressure. Nurses remained affectively close enough to preserve trust with children and families while regulating distress to remain clinically and professionally available. Four interrelated constituents expressed this structure: emotional ambivalence in the nurse-child-family relationship; meaning-making and professional confirmation; practice demands and contextual constraints; and self-regulation and personal-life spillover.

Caring for children with cancer was experienced as a continuous balancing of relational closeness, professional responsibility, organizational limitations, and personal vulnerability. These findings suggest that the quality and sustainability of relational care depend not only on nurses' individual self-regulation but also on supportive organizational conditions.

Pediatric oncology services should provide structured reflective debriefings after emotionally difficult events, simulation-based training for complex communication with children and families, and confidential peer and psychological support. Adequate staffing, protected time for communication, and team routines that support continuity and shared reflection may help nurses sustain relationally responsive care.