Barn med kreft: Informasjon til foreldre og deres møte med helsepersonell

The purpose of this thesis is to study how parents of children with cancer experience the information that is given and their relation to health professionals treating their child. When a child or a youth has a serious illness, the parents’ daily lives are also affected. The parents need and require information of how to handle the child’s illness and the reactions of the child, other family members and the parents themselves. Cancer among children and youth often expose their parents to several stress factors. This study is made by applying qualitative research method. It has been conducted four in-depth interviews with parents of children who have completed treatment for cancer. The results show that the parents were mostly satisfied with the received information. The parents in the study expressed a demand and need to be better prepared, both in terms of possible side effects and to be able to prepare their child. The connection with health professionals were experienced by the parents as good, better with some than others. The results also show that parents found that the child received good treatment and was well taken care of. My findings suggest that parents think that they needed their own consultations with health professionals, but the most experienced having to ask for it themselves. The areas that were experienced as stressful during the child's illness were patient surveys, waiting for test results and the fear of recurrence and late effects of the disease. The parents felt that they handled the challenges of the child's illness well, and they were surprised by their own capabilities related to the child's illness