Parent Perceptions of a Pretend Play Intervention for Their Children With Cancer

Abstract

Background: Although the rate of survival in childhood cancer today is close to 85%, a cancer diagnosis can still turn the world upside down for both children and parents. Often, children in oncology care are frustrated about their inability to control events and activities around them. Therapeutic pretend play has been suggested as a means to encourage children to express and handle emotions in a safe environment.Purpose: This study was developed to describe and explore parents' experiences of a pretend play intervention that consisted of six to eight play sessions with a play facilitator administered to their children undergoing cancer treatment.Methods: A descriptive qualitative method was used, including individual interviews with 15 parents.Results: Three main categories were developed, including (a) experiences of joining the project, (b) perceptions of the play intervention, and (c) reflections on effects and implications, with subcategories evolved for each category. The parents experienced that the play sessions helped improve their children's communication skills and made them more capable of participating in their care. They appreciated that the intervention focused on the child's well-being and saw it as a positive break in their child's cancer treatment. It also helped them better reflect on their own situation.Conclusions/Implications for Practice: According to the parents' experiences, pretend play can be a helpful tool for improving children's participation in their cancer care that strengthens their autonomy, emotional repertoire, and communication skills. However, the results also highlighted that some of the children did not fully understand the information provided about this study, which weakened the validity of their consent to participate. Thus, more work is needed on developing age-appropriate information to obtain participation consent from children. In addition, more knowledge is needed regarding how to appropriately include children with cancer in research in an ethically acceptable way.

Effects of a Pretend Play Intervention on Health-Related Quality of Life in Children With Cancer: A Swedish–German Study

“…We found changes regarding the emotional, psychosocial, and school-related subscales. Parents’ experiences (Höglund et al, in press) support these findings. The intervention did not target the physical components of HrQoL, and therefore no alterations in scores were expected.…”

“…The reason could be that the parents could not sense alteration in their children's behaviors or that the measure is not sensitive enough to capture alteration in SE for communication. However, when the parents were interviewed after the play intervention was completed, most of the parents talked about how they experienced an improvement in their children's ability to communicate, cope with care situations and participate in their care (Höglund et al, in press).…”