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Adolescents completing cancer therapy: meaning, perception, and coping
1Department of Family Health Care Nursing, School of Nursing, University of California, San Francisco.
Purpose/Objectives:
To explore and describe adolescents' experiences and associated changes in coping strategies during the time period from three to six months before cancer therapy completion to six months after completion.
Design:
Exploratory, descriptive, longitudinal, qualitative design using grounded theory techniques.
Setting:
Pediatric oncology outpatient clinics in the San Francisco Bay area and British Columbia.
Sample:
13 adolescents undergoing cancer therapy.
Methods:
Semistructured interview conducted at four points in time (three to six months prior to completion of chemotherapy, at time of completion, three months after completion, and six months after completion). Subjects' responses were tape-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using constant comparative techniques.
Findings:
Themes emerged from the data in three categories: meaning and perception of the experience of completing cancer therapy (task accomplishment, movement toward a normal life); coping strategies before completion of therapy (positive thinking, not thinking about treatments, "busy-ness," reinterpretation, and "philosophical stance"); and coping strategies after completion of therapy (negotiation, cognitive reliving, selective forgetting).
Conclusions:
Completion of cancer therapy is an event that is uniquely perceived by adolescents, and they employ different coping strategies before and after completion.
Implications For Nursing Practice:
Knowledge of adolescents' experiences of completing chemotherapy will assist nurses in offering support to the patient as well as to the parents who must support their child. Further longitudinal studies with larger samples are needed, as are studies comparing and contrasting the views of the adolescents and the parents.