The effects of health professionals on the hope of the mothers of the pediatric oncology patients

The Effects of Health Professionals on the Hope of the Mothers of the Pediatric Oncology Patients Objective: The research was conducted to determine the effects of health workers on the hope of the mothers of pediatric oncology patients. Method: The research was conducted in a descriptive qualitative research type phenomenology research in order to determine the effects of health care workers on the hope of mothers of pediatric oncology patients and to examine the mothers' experiences in a multidimensional way. Interviews were conducted with 6 mothers who agreed to participate in the study at Ege University Faculty of Medicine Tulay Aktas Oncology Hospital Pediatric Oncology Unit. Data were collected with a semi-structured interview form and sociodemographic data form which included questions describing the characteristics of mothers such as age, education level. During the in-depth interviews conducted with the participants, in order to determine the effects of health workers on the hope of mothers of pediatric oncology patients, questions were asked to reveal mothers' experiences, feelings and perceptions. The answers of the mothers to the questions were recorded by audio recording and analyzed after coding the basic contents with the qualitative data analysis program of MAXQDA Analytics Pro-18. Results: The research findings were divided into four themes. Themes; the process of hope, diagnosis and treatment consists of positive thoughts about the approaches of health personnel and negative thoughts about the approaches of health personnel. In the interviews, it was found that the hope of mothers was affected by the approaches of health personnel during the treatment process from the moment they learned the diagnosis. The hope of the mothers who take the child oncology treatment tends to increase or decrease with the attitudes of the health workers. It was determined that the hope of the mothers was negatively affected by the reasons such as the doctors being comfortable in the diagnosis at the time of the first diagnosis, the discussions with the nurses in the hospital and the mothers not getting enough information from the health workers. It was found that factors such as friendly and constructive approaches of health workers, attention to the sick child, sensitive approaches of nurses during invasive interventions, and efforts of doctors in treatment increased the hope of mothers. Conclusion: It is known that positive mental status of the patient's relatives in chronic diseases such as cancer helps patients to overcome the difficulties. Therefore, knowing and considering the effects of health worker on the hope of mothers of children with cancer will contribute to strengthening professional care. Keywords; pediatrics, hope, cancer, mother,