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Learning Objective 1: The learner will be able to identify what kind of issues regarding late-middle-aged cancer patients with minor children are involved in Japan.
Learning Objective 2: The learner will be able to understand understand experiences and thoughts of cancer mothers with minor children, the children’s thoughts, and grief care.
Cancer has been the number one cause of death in Japan since 1981 and currently accounts for over 300,000 deaths annually. Depending on the type of cancer, the number of patients suffering from cancer increases from the late-middle-age. When late-middle-aged patients suffer from cancer, it causes a great mental and physical burden, disturbing their work and home life. The purpose of this study was to clarify how late-middle-aged cancer patients in Japan related to their minor children and what kind of issues were involved through a comprehensive review of the literatures.
METHODS:
An search conducted of the online version of the Ichushi Web by Japan Medical Abstracts Society, CiNii (Scholarly and Academic Information Navigator), and PubMed using the key words ‘cancer’, ‘parent’, and ‘child’ excluding conference abstracts. Forty-one reports were targeted for this review.
RESULTS:
The contents of the literatures were categorized into the following four categories: ‘cancer patient’s thoughts on and relationship to a minor child’; ‘minor child’s experiences and thoughts with a cancer parent’; grief care for family including a minor child’, ‘real relation by nurses to let a minor child know about parent’s disease and death.’ None of the studies regarding late-middle-aged cancer parents with minor children targeted male patients in Japan.
CONCLUSIONS:
It’s necessary to make approach to a minor child with a cancer parent to understand his/her situation. Though support on decision making to a cancer patient who is a parent and his/her spouse is important to tell a minor child the parent situation, the support system is not set in Japan. Interaction by late middle aged cancer patients with their children should be encouraged so that patients can individually achieve self-realization and the families can grow together.