Introduction
According to the 2014 China
Children’s Causes of Death Report, malignant tumors rank second among
children aged 5-141. With the continuous updating of
comprehensive treatment methods and the improvement of treatment
programs, the survival rate of children with pediatric cancers has been
significantly improved, especially for leukemia, lymphoma, Wilms tumor,
etc.2,3. However, the children are under the threat of
death for a long time, leaving the familiar family environment, being
isolated from the school learning environment, and receiving various
diagnoses and treatment in unfamiliar hospitals. These are all very
strong stresses that will bring different degrees of psychological
discomfort and pain, which affect their quality of
life4,5. Therefore, the life quality and psychological
intervention of long-term survivors of pediatric cancers have received
more and more attention.
Previous studies have shown that children with pediatric cancers often
have a sense of social isolation, and it is difficult to return to the
group of children of the same age6,7. The reason is
partly due to intensive treatments causing growth arrest, body image
destruction, fear of tumor recurrence. And more often, it is caused by
social problems such as wasted or delayed schoolwork, reduced exercise,
and worries about one’s health and reproductive ability caused by
long-term treatment8,9. People are increasingly aware
of the importance of the mental health of children with malignant tumors
and their families. Psychosocial support teams in the United States and
Canada, including social workers, clinical psychologists, and child life
specialists, are committed to developing programs that can reduce the
psychological burden of children with cancer and their parents, and
provide powerful support for children and their
families10,11. Psychosocial support can not only
improve the psychological problems of children and their families but
also improve the compliance of children with treatment and reduce the
failure rate of treatment12.
China lags behind developed countries in terms of children’s
psychosocial care, but the psychosocial needs of children with pediatric
cancers and their families are attracting more and more attention from
medical staff in clinical work13,14. In recent years,
Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center has also paid special attention to
the psychosocial and humanistic care of children with cancer. In 2020,
the Department of Pediatric Oncology of Sun Yat-Sen University’s Cancer
Center launched a “Ward School Program (WSP)”, which aims to provide
psychosocial support for long-term hospitalized children with cancer.
Educational support and psychological counseling, through online
facetime and offline classrooms, each child is assigned a headteacher
and a teacher of each subject. According to their learning needs,
different subject counseling and emotional accompaniment are provided to
solve the problems of lack of educational resources, psychological
cognitive barriers, and prone to study weariness. The goal of this study
was to comprehensively evaluate the value of WSP for children with
pediatric cancers and their parents.