The nurse is caring for a young woman with breast cancer. The stress between the woman and her husband is obvious, as is anxiety among the children. What is the nurse's best action in this situation?
a. Help find or develop an educational program for the patient and her husband.
b. Encourage the patient to agree with her husband even if she disagrees.
c. Support the husband, and explain that the husband knows what's best.
d. Take the children away and recommend foster care.
A
It has been found that if cancer survivors and their partners participated in an educational program to teach the importance of disclosing feelings and then actually disclosed them, relationships and intimacy were improved. Encouraging honest communication within families is an important intervention for the nurse to implement to enhance family relationships. Core family functions include maintaining an emotionally and physically safe environment, interpreting and reducing the threat of stressful events (including the cancer) for family members, and nurturing and supporting the development of individual family members. In childrearing families, this means providing an attentive parenting environment for children and information and support to children when their sense of well-being becomes threatened. Spouses often do not know what to do to support the survivor, and they struggle with how to help.
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