Caring for children with cancer involves more than just medical cancer treatment. Nurses are responsible for a wide range of nursing tasks. They discuss the disease and treatment with children and parents, monitor children’s nutritional needs, give pain treatment, insert catheters, care for wounds and much more.
These nursing tasks are associated with varying degrees of uncertainty about how they are best performed and there may therefore be a need for more evidence. In a recent study, health care professionals at six childhood cancer centers in Sweden were asked about knowledge gaps that they perceived created uncertainty in their work. What questions does future nursing research need to investigate more closely?
The study identified approximately fifteen aspects of nursing that the staff considered required research efforts. They expressed uncertainty about aspects such as how best to talk to adolescents about fertility and sexuality, the benefits and disadvantages of tube feeding, how best to support children’s and families’ participation in care, or how pain assessment methods can be integrated more efficiently to ensure good pain relief. They also expressed uncertainty about children’s and adolescents’ body image and how it is affected by treatment effects on appearance, and uncertainty about the best diet in connection with cancer treatment.
Identifying areas where more research is needed is important. However, in the discussion of the results, the authors emphasize that evidence for many of the areas identified already exists. Of course, even more evidence may be needed. But it may also be that the research has not been effectively disseminated to nursing practice. The authors therefore emphasize the need to actually implement evidence in the form of guidelines and treatment protocols. They also emphasize that one way to increase awareness of existing evidence is to increase nurses’ involvement in research.
Read the article here: Research gaps in nursing status and interventions – A deductive qualitative analysis of healthcare professionals’ perspectives from Swedish childhood cancer care.
Written by…
Pär Segerdahl, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics and editor of the Ethics Blog.
Cecilia Bartholdson, Anna Pilström, Pernilla Pergert, Johanna Granhagen Jungner, Maria Olsson, “Research gaps in nursing status and interventions – A deductive qualitative analysis of healthcare professionals’ perspectives from Swedish childhood cancer care,” European Journal of Oncology Nursing, Volume 78, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejon.2025.102972
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