Research Information System
19th EAWOP Congress, Turin, Italy, 29 May - 01 June 2019, pp.3
A Qualitative Study on the Experiences of Nurses
Employed in Pediatric Oncology Departments: Stress, and Burnout
Pediatric Oncology
Departments are substantially stressful places for the nurses to be employed as
they take care of the children diagnosed with cancer and deal with their
mournful parents. To understand their
experiences we conducted a qualitative study on 12 pediatric oncology nurses
working with children with leukemia through semi-structured in-depth interviews
in İstanbul, Turkey. These interviews were tape-recorded and deciphered and
analyzed by using a thematic-analysis approach. Three main and three subthemes
were attained. The first theme of the interviews were related with the
difficulties of working as a pediatric oncology nurse with subthemes like
psychological difficulties working with children with cancer, working
conditions, and problems with patients’ parents. These themes showed that the nurses somehow
attached with the children and experienced the fear of losing them as there is
a risk of death. For working conditions they emphasized the work-load, working
hours, working with shifts, dealing with chemotherapeutic drugs and difficulties
of providing the drugs on time. They mentioned that most of the families with
pain showed their anger and insurrection to them as they are the closest
service providers. For the second main
theme most of the nurses had chosen the profession with economic concerns, and
it revealed that they had shared similar socio-economic backgrounds as
students. The third theme was about the person-job fit showing that these
nurses had common traits such as tolerance, patience, calmness, and responsibility.
The interviews revealed that these nurses work in stressful conditions and
experience burnout symptoms and sometimes they can be traumatized with the
death of children.
Key Words: Pediatric Oncology Nurses, Experiences, Work-Load,
Stress and Burnout