THOUGHTS OF DEATH AND GRIEF RELATED TO THE EXPERIENCE OF BEING A SIBLING OF A CHILD WITH CANCER

• Purpose: To describe siblings’ thoughts about death and grief related to the experience of being a sibling of a child with cancer, during or after treatment or death. Method: The subjects of the study were with 35 siblings, 19 had a brother or sister who was alive and 16 had lost their brother or sister. The method uses a life world approach, twenty were single interviews and fifteen were performed in three support group meetings in concordance with focus group method and all interviews were analysed with qualitative content analysis. Result: Death has been a possibility for the siblings since the cancer diagnosis and they felt anticipatory grief and grief regardless of age or sex on whether the brother or sister would survive or die. Thoughts of fatal outcomes repressed. For siblings when the child died have to live and cope with the grief. Conclusion: Siblings had similar thoughts about survive or die and all of them experienced anticipatory grief directly after diagnose of cancer. Despite age have sibling more experiences in common and this made them more equal. Death was unthinkable and they were in no way prepared for a fatal outcome.

Subject headings

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Hälsovetenskap -- Omvårdnad (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Health Sciences -- Nursing (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Sibling and grief

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)