Evaluating the cancer related fatigue by children, mothers, and nurses in Turkish pediatric oncology patients.

Abstract

The aims of this study were to evaluate cancer related fatigue by children', mothers', and nurses' perspectives in recently diagnosed pediatric oncology patients, to evaluate levels of agreement between the fatigue scales, and to evaluate the relationships between fatigue and sample characteristics. The sample of this cohort, descriptive, correlational study consisted of 26 recently cancer diagnosed children between the ages of 7 and 12, receiving inpatient treatment in pediatric oncology/hematology units, their mothers and their nurses. The data about children's fatigue were collected using the Child Fatigue Scale-24h, Parent Fatigue Scale-24h and Staff Fatigue Scale-24h, for two consecutive days in the second and third weeks of the patient's first chemotherapy treatment cycle. The mean scores of the Child Fatigue Scale-24h showed the children's fatigue to be at a moderate level, a statistically significant difference was found between the CFS-24h and PFS-24h mean scores in the first and second measurement (p<0.05). The Intraclass correlation showed a good agreement between scales and repeated measurements for these scales. Fatigue in recently diagnosed cancer patients is an important symptom which is of particular concern to the children, their parents and nurses. The study showed that these three scales can be used alone an also used simultaneously, and also proved that these scales are reliable for repeated measurements.