91 Pediatric Oncology Patient’s Conceptualization of Cancer Symptoms

Faculty Mentor: Lauri Linder (Nursing, University of Utah)

Background

According to American Childhood Cancer Organization [1], approximately 1 in 285 children in the U.S. are diagnosed with cancer before their 20th birthday. But treatments often involve intense and difficult procedures which can make children feel distressed while also disrupting their quality of life [2]. Their ability to participate in daily activities becomes severely restricted and relationships with parents and siblings are also negatively affected as a result of the short- and long-term symptoms experienced [3].   

Learning about how children perceive and/or describe their symptoms is challenging because they often become frustrated when asked to rate symptoms on a self-assessment scale or to tell individuals around them who can’t truly appreciate or understand their suffering. Most children prefer to deal with their feelings on their own. However, it is important to discover how children feel and think about these symptoms because it can aid nurses, healthcare providers, and families to provide a more comprehensive, individualized, and sensitive approach to care. And because suffering with cancer is a shared experience, children’s overall conceptualization of symptoms often constituted a multidimensional phenomenon of multiple symptoms, social interactions, and various environments. Therefore, to effectively track the course of the disease, it’s vital to explore and recognize relationships on the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal levels as all these impact the children’s experiences with symptoms [2].

To address this problem, I plan to embark on a project where I will be reviewing transcripts of qualitative cognitive interviews conducted by Dr. Linder with child cancer patients as part of her KIDS-SM study on the online software program, Dedoose. I am hoping that utilizing excerpts of the transcripts as my primary source of analysis will help me gain a sense of the whole picture regarding children’s experiences with the disease (i.e., how they describe aspects of symptoms). And then I can use a content analysis via an inductive qualitative approach to identify commonalities among the excerpts and ultimately understand child cancer patient’s conceptualization of symptoms.

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the Huntsman Cancer Institute Cancer Control and Population Sciences Pilot Grant and the University of Utah Presidential Scholar Award.