No abstract

A structured 8-week post-hospital telephone nursing intervention after an ICD had sustained 12-month improvements on patient concerns, anxiety, fear of dying, self-efficacy, and knowledge. Results may not apply to individuals with congestive heart failure who receive an ICD for primary prevention of sudden cardiac arrest.

Study findings shed light on how adolescents self-manage their parent's advanced cancer and work to delimit the illness even as they are aware of its constant presence. Future research and intervention studies are needed to support and add to the adolescents' self-management strategies to weave a normal life for themselves while in the throes of the cancer's uncertainty and challenges with family communication.

Despite the high rates of breast cancer in the child-rearing mother, there is extremely limited research on the effects of the illness on the children, marriage, and parent-child relationship. The current study tested an explanatory model of family functioning with breast cancer based on data obtained from standardized questionnaires from 80 diagnosed mothers and partners with young school-age children. Path analysis results for data obtained from both the mothers and the partners revealed a similar pattern. More frequently experienced illness demands were associated with higher levels of parental depressed mood which negatively affected the marriage. When the marriage was less well adjusted, it negatively affected the family's coping behavior. Household functioning was positively affected by heightened coping activity and by higher levels of marital adjustment. Children functioned better when the non-ill parent more frequently interacted with them and their families coped more frequently with their problems.