Pediatric Cancer

Dawn M. Carey RN, MSN, APN, LITE Program Coordinator, Pediatric Nurse Practitioner, Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, discusses caring for childhood cancer survivors.

When trained, advanced practice nurses followed up written heart screening guidelines with telephone calls to survivors of childhood cancers, screening uptake more than doubled among those who received the telephone-based counseling.

When parents are involved in the care of a child with cancer, they experience both positive and negative changes in their relationships, communication, stress, and their roles.

As oncology nurses, we have too often seen young adults who, successfully cured of their childhood cancers, return with serious or debilitating health concerns or even a secondary malignancy as a late effect from chemotherapy or radiation.

Adult survivors of childhood cancer face significant health problems as they age and are five times more likely than their siblings to develop new cancers, heart, and other serious health conditions beyond the age of 35 years