Background: Hope has been found to support parents as they care for their child with a life-limiting or life-threatening illness. However, very little research focuses on the nursing care of parents of pediatric oncology patients, and therefore, nurses may have difficulty in understanding and supporting parental well-being. Objective: The purpose of this qualitative study was to gain an understanding of the experience of hope for parents who care for their child in treatment for cancer. Methods: Using purposive theoretical sampling, 16 parents participated in this study. Thirty-three open-ended, face-to-face interviews were conducted, and 14 parent journals were collected. Analysis of the data was conducted using Charmaz’s constructivist grounded theory approach. Results: A developing, substantive grounded theory was constructed. Parental hope was described as an essential, powerful, deliberate, life-sustaining, dynamic, cyclical process that was anchored in time; was calming and strengthening; and provided inner guidance through the challenging experience of preparing for the worst and hoping for the best. Parents’ main concern was “fearing the loss of hope,” which was ameliorated by the basic social process of “keeping hope possible” through accepting reality, establishing control, restructuring hope, and purposive positive thinking. Conclusions: Parents journeyed through numerous transitions related to the treatment of cancer that caused feelings of uncertainty, anxiety, stress, and loss of control. Hope was identified as vital to parents. Implications for Practice: To minimize these adverse experiences, nurses can support parents’ ability to keep hope possible and thus to optimize their well-being by understanding, assessing, and supporting parental hope.

The purpose of this secondary analysis was to develop an enhanced understanding of the experiences of parents who have children in treatment for cancer. Data collected from 16 parents (12 mothers and 4 fathers) were analyzed using Frank’s dialogical narrative analysis. Findings demonstrated that parents’ experiences were represented in chaos, restitution, and quest narratives. Each of these narratives was only one instance of a very complex and changing parental experience that cannot be understood in isolation from the others. The holistic understanding provided by these findings contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of parental experiences of their child’s illness and highlights the need for health professionals to invite conversations about parents’ illness experience and attend to the specific narrative type parents are presenting to support them adequately. Additional research is required to develop supportive approaches for each narrative which takes into account the complexities of parents’ experiences.

Background: Interprofessional education (IPE) provides healthcare students with the knowledge and skills necessary to provide safe and effective collaborative care in a variety of clinical settings. Inclusion of IPE in nursing curricula is required for program accreditation in Canada; a variety of learning strategies at varied levels are used to meet this requirement. As this formal requirement only occurred over the last decade, development, facilitation, and evaluation of IPE interventions are ongoing.Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine if exposure to an introductory IPE activity influenced third-year undergraduate nursing students’ perceived ability to practice competent interprofessional collaboration (IPC).Methods: The introductory IPE activity included ten-hours of interactive lectures and related case studies, grounded in the National Interprofessional Competency Framework, delivered by various healthcare professionals in a third-year nursing theory and clinical course. Following completion of the courses, quantitative data were collected via the Interprofessional Collaborative Competencies Attainment Survey (ICCAS) which was used to evaluate nursing students’ change in competencies for IPC. Frequencies, percentages, and means were used to analyze the demographic data, the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was used to evaluate the internal reliability of the ICCAS, and paired t-tests were conducted to measure the difference from pre- to post-participation for all 20 items and 6 subscales of the ICCAS.Results: Study participants (n = 111) completed the ICCAS at the end of the courses to measure change in six competencies. The survey results indicated improvements in all competencies following the IPE activity.Conclusions: The significant findings demonstrate that exposure to introductory IPE activities, involving nursing students and other healthcare professionals, hold promise for enhancing IPC in pediatric clinical settings. These findings can be used to inform the development of formal IPE interventions.