Trying to Feel Normal Again: Early Survivorship for Adolescent Cancer Survivors

Conclusions This study contributes to our understanding of survivors' relationships with parents, siblings, and friends and survivors' models of the illness. Future studies are needed to understand how parents can help adolescents assume greater responsibility for their care, to understand what it is like for friends to have a peer with cancer and what behaviors by healthcare providers contribute to feelings of abandonment later in survivorship, and to better understand adolescent survivors' models of the illness and survivorship. Implications for Practice Study results suggest that nurses are in an ideal position to begin and to continue discussions with adolescent survivors about the adolescent's view of medical follow- up, its purpose and importance, and ways in which the adolescent can begin, early on, to engage in planning their own health during survivorship.
Source: Cancer Nursing - Category: Nursing Tags: ARTICLES: ONLINE ONLY Source Type: research