Children with cancer parents’ uncertainty

Abstract

Cancer is a chronic disease that represents a constant risk in people’s life, it represents the unknown, but when we are talking about a child, all this emotional reactions could be harder for parents, even when the disease is under control; uncertainty is always there. Mishel (1988) pointed that uncertainty is a cognitive state in which people are incapable to build the meaning of the events that occur because of the disease. Objective: to identify the uncertainty in parents of children with cancer, considering the relation between the social-demographic characteristics, diagnostic time, and the social support in the Mishel theory (1988). Methodology: the design was correlational descriptive and transverse, the sample had 30 persons, the variables were measured with three instruments: a bond of social-demographical factors from parents of children with cancer, a bond of social support (Norbeck NSSQ, 1981), and the scale of perception of uncertainty in parents PPUS-FM (mishel, 1988) Results: correlations of Pearson was used for the verification of the relations between the variables, observing that the variable female sex refers high uncertainty p=.010, about the years of formal education, it was observed that more education means less uncertainty, a negative correlation of p=-.025, about the social-economical level it was shown that it doesn’t exists any difference to make uncertainty appear p=.523, about the social support it was observed that more support means less uncertainty p=.008. Conclusions: it’s recommendable to realize qualitative research to appreciate which are the feelings that parents are suffering at the moment of knowing their children’s diagnostic in order to provide to health professionals the knowledge to understand the uncertainty they are passing trough.