Background: Providing qualified, evidence-based healthcare to children requires increased knowledge of how cancer affects the young child's life. There is a dearth of research focusing on the young child's experience of everyday life.
Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore young children's and their parents' perceptions of how cancer affects the child's health and everyday life shortly after diagnosis.
Methods: Thirteen children with newly diagnosed cancer aged 1 to 6 years and their parents, connected to a pediatric oncology unit in Southern Sweden, participated in this study through semistructured interviews. Child and parent data were analyzed as a family unit, using qualitative content analysis.
Results: Everyday life was spent at hospital or at home waiting to go back to hospital. Analysis led to the following categories: feeling like a stranger, feeling powerless, and feeling isolated.
Conclusions: The child wants to be seen as a competent individual requiring information and participation in care. Parents need to be a safe haven for their child and not feel forced to legitimize painful and traumatic procedures by assisting with them. Nurses play a major role in the lives of children. Research with and on the young child is necessary and a way of making them visible and promoting their health and well-being.
Implications for practice: Nurses need to reevaluate the newly diagnosed child's care routines so as to shift focus from the illness to the child. This requires competent nurses, secure in their caring role.