Nursing care in Pedriatics – Part II

Learn about oncologic pediatric nursing care and how do nursing units operate in these scenarios

In the case of children with cancer, nurses are an important part of the care team that attends them, so they play an essential role in pediatric oncology nursing care.

Nurses are often the main contact for the patient, together with the patient’s family, both in and out of the hospital.  In hospitalized patients, they are the ones who provide primary care and in outpatients, they are the ones who collaborate in the collection of information for the history and provide care to the patient.

Responsibilities of Nursing Care in Pediatric Oncology

We have already mentioned that these responsibilities are fundamental, so we will detail them below:

• Monitoring the vital signs of each patient.
• To take care of the feeding of each child with pediatric cancer in their care.
• To comply with the treatment or to enter surgery, is responsible for preparing the patient.
• Administers medications and chemotherapy.
• Performs physical examinations and other pertinent evaluations of the patient and his/her condition.
• Is in charge of taking blood samples and other fluids to perform the respective laboratory tests.
• Provides hygienic care.
• Administers products for blood transfusions or blood replacement.
• Educate families, providing information on topics such as: cancer diagnoses, treatments and medications, home care, in order to involve the family in pediatric oncology nursing care.
• According to the diagnosis, treatment and place of treatment, some nurses collaborate with the treating physicians in the following activities: planning care regimens, assigning treatments, issuing prescriptions.

Pediatric Oncology Nursing Care Team

Typically, a small care team has different nurses who perform different but often interrelated functions. This makes it easier for teams to provide complex, multifaceted services.

The number of members of the pediatric oncology nursing care team will vary throughout the course of the treatment regimen and will depend on how much care is required. This includes such things as the following:

• Whether the little one had surgery recently.
• How many medications are being managed.
• How recent the diagnosis is.
• How advanced the pathology is.

It is common for nurses to take turns – usually 8 to 12 hours per shift – to contact each other and distribute information to ensure that care is as continuous as possible when moving from one shift to the next.

Typically, nurses are responsible for seeing numerous patients in a shift; among other things, oncology nurses are usually assigned to care for three patients simultaneously.