Telling children about a parent's cancer

doi:10.1136/bmj.321.7259.462

BMJ 2000;321:462-463 ( 19 August )

Editorials

Telling children about a parent's cancer

Parents want help but don't get it

Papers p 479

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

No one finds it easy to break bad news. Doctors' frequent failure to do this well has been extensively documented and analysed.The need for better training has been recognised, and our practiceis, hopefully, improving. But recipients of bad news then haveto decide how to tell those close to them. Knowing what to sayto children can seem particularly difficult. A study in this week'sBMJ (p 479) suggests that there is an unmet need in giving helpwith this task.¹ Barnes and colleagues interviewed 32 motherswith stage I or stage II breast cancer four to six months afterthey had been diagnosed to explore the timing and extent of communicationabout the diagnosis to their children. A fifth of children hadbeen given no information at the time their mothers had surgery.Women who had higher levels of education gave less informationto their children. Many . . . [Full text of this article]

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