Abstract

When the parents are informed that their children have cancer, they are shocked. They hesitate to accept the fact and become very anxious. Therefore, it is very important to provide the necessary psychological support to the parents. The purpose of this study was to classify anxiety in parents of children with neuroblastoma, according to the Japanese Society of Pediatric Surgery as stage I , stage II , stage ID , stage IVA, stage IV B and stage IV S. All of these patients' nursing records were reviewed to check contents of the interviews with parents etc. From these records, descriptions which suggested that the attending nurses had acknowledged parent's anxiety and crisis were extracted. These discriptions were then analyzed in relation to the clinical stage of children. The results of this study show that anxiety and confusion of the parents differed according to their children's clinical stage of the neuroblastoma.