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Learning Objective 1: 1) Understand why comfort is an important component in the care of adolescents with metastatic cancer.
Learning Objective 2: 2) Enumerate the adolescents' description of their own comfort experience.
Statement of the Problem
Most practitioners rely on the parents and caregivers to provide information about adolescents’ perspectives of their illness and treatment experience. However, adolescents can offer significant insights into their own experiences. This pilot study explored the meaning and significance of comfort experience as described by the adolescents with metastatic cancer.
SPECIFIC AIM:
1) To explore the meaning and significance of comfort experienced by adolescents diagnosed with metastatic cancer.
Background
Published studies about adolescent’s description of their comfort experiences while undergoing treatment for metastatic cancer are limited. Expanded knowledge of how young patients explicate the meaning and significance of their comfort experience helps bridge a gap in our knowledge and can inform our practice.
Procedure for collection and treatment of the data
This pilot study was conducted in a children’s cancer hospital of a large tertiary institution that specializes in the treatment of cancer. Purposive sampling was used to recruit patients. Data collection tools were a demographic questionnaire and a semi-structured interview guide designed by the research team. The data were analyzed using combined descriptive and interpretive phenomenology.
Findings
These young patients collectively described happiness and well-being as the meaning of comfort. The significance of their comfort experience is their hopefulness for the future. Comfort fueled their ability to accept the diagnosis and their hope to face the challenges of the treatment. Other themes that emerged are: “My World Ended”, “I will face it” (Resilience), “Being with Me”.
Conclusion and Implications
Comfort is an essential factor that helped them accept their disease and cope with the distress associated with their treatment. This concept will be examined in more depth in a subsequent study with a larger sample.