Australian Hospital-Based Parenting Support for Adults with Incurable End-Stage Cancer: Parent Perspectives

ABSTRACT

Parenting support needs of patients diagnosed with incurable end-stage cancer (IESC) with young families are not addressed as part of routine hospital health care. Their support needs and experiences of hospital-based parenting support are largely unknown. The study aims to explore hospital-based parenting support delivery from patient and co-parent perspectives in context to their parenting experience and support needs. Exploratory, prospective, cross-sectional qualitative design. Semi-structured in-depth interviews with eight adult patients with IESC and four co-parents purposively recruited from a tertiary hospital in Melbourne, Australia. Findings were thematically analyzed. Parents desire support with challenging multidimensional parenting issues. Organization, health professionals (HP), and parental-based factors hinder and facilitate optimal service provision. Responsibility rests with HP to initiate parenting support. Interdisciplinary family-focused support offered throughout IESC health-care journey is key. Patient-centered family-focused support is warranted. Surmountable challenges lie with management and HPs to address barriers affecting optimal service delivery.

KEYWORDS:

• Health care
• hospital
• palliative care
• parental cancer
• parenting
• psychosocial intervention
• qualitative

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest regarding the research, authorship, and publication of this article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.