Background:The manner in which healthcare professionals deliver bad news affects the way it is received, interpreted, understood, and dealt with. Despite the fact that clinicians are responsible for breaking bad news, it has been shown that they lack skills necessary to perform this task.Objectives:The purpose of this study was to explore Iranian mothers’ experiences to receive bad news about their children cancer and to summarize suggestions for improving delivering bad news by healthcare providers.Materials and Methods:A qualitative approach using content analysis was adopted. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 mothers from two pediatric hospitals in Iran.Results:Five major categories emerged from the data analysis, including dumping information, shock and upset, emotional work, burden of delivering bad news to the family members, and a room for multidisciplinary approach.Conclusions:Effective communication of healthcare team with mothers is required during breaking bad news. Using multidisciplinary approaches to prevent harmful reactions and providing appropriate support are recommended.

In highlighting these issues, this article may provide a useful starting point for the development of an educational framework for preparing nurses and other health professionals to work in the disaster setting.

It is concluded that nurses and parents need a care model, which addresses their collaboration and improved interpersonal relationship and clearly defines the boundary of their roles based on the needs of both sides while allowing parents to choose their role in these defined boundaries and providing parent education with aim to empower them for care at home.

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The purpose of this study was to explore parents' and nurses' experiences of parental participation in child care in hospitals in Iran. Using thematic analysis, the data were collected through interviewing 14 parents and 11 nurses from two pediatric hospitals. The results showed that four major themes emerged, including the necessity of a parent's presence, the unplanned and informal delegation of care to the parents (which itself had five subthemes: the parents as nurses, the delegation of care without sufficient and planned parental training, informal parent-to-parent support, the continuum of parents' willingness to participate, and the neglect of parents' needs), the inconsistency of care, and the parents as informal evaluators of care. Based on the study's findings, effective communication by nurses with parents is required. Nurses need to make an ongoing assessment of parents' wishes for involvement and negotiate care accordingly, with enough support and supervision to warrant quality of care.