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Truth-telling to the seriously ill child – Nurses’ experiences, attitudes, and beliefs
El Ali, Mandy Licqurish, Sharon O'Neill, Jenny Gillam, Lynn
El Ali, Mandy
Licqurish, Sharon
O'Neill, Jenny
Gillam, Lynn
Abstract
Background: Nurses play an integral role in the care of children hospitalised with a serious illness. Although information about diagnostics, treatments, and prognosis are generally conveyed to parents and caregivers of seriously ill children by physicians, nurses spend a significant amount of time at the child’s bedside and have an acknowledged role in helping patients and families understand the information that they have been given by a doctor. Hence, the ethical role of the nurse in truth disclosure to children is worth exploring.
Methods: A systematic academic database and grey literature search strategy was conducted using CINAHL, Medline Psych Info, and Google Scholar. Keywords used included truth, children, nurse, disclosure, serious illness, and communication. A total of 17 publications of varying types were included in the final data set.
Ethical Considerations: As this was a review of the literature, there were no direct human participants. Empirical studies included in the review had received ethics approval.
Results: Of the 17 articles included in the review, only one directly reported on the experiences of nurses asked to withhold the truth from patients. Empirical studies were limited to HIV-positive children and children diagnosed with cancer and the dying child.
Conclusion: A paucity of literature exploring the experiences, attitudes, and beliefs of nurses with regard to truth-telling to seriously ill children is evident. Little consideration has been given to the role nurses play in communicating medical information to children in a hospital setting. The 17 articles included in the review focused on cancer, and HIV, diagnosis, and end-of-life care. Further research should be undertaken to explore the experiences and attitudes of nurses to clinical information sharing to children hospitalised with a wide range of serious illnesses and in diverse clinical scenarios.
Keywords
Ethical challenges, nurse, disclosure, lying, truth-telling, topic areas, ethics and children in care, adolescent, literature review, empirical approaches, ethics of care/care ethics, theory/philosophical perspectives, clinical ethics
Date
2024
Type
Journal article
Journal
Book
Volume
31
Issue
5
Page Range
930-950
Article Number
ACU Department
School of Nursing, Midwifery and Paramedicine
Faculty of Health Sciences
Faculty of Health Sciences
Relation URI
Event URL
Open Access Status
Published as ‘gold’ (paid) open access
License
CC BY-NC 4.0
File Access
Open
Notes
© The Author(s) 2023
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). Request permissions for this article.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). Request permissions for this article.