Radiation therapy: teaching the pediatric patient and family.

Radiation therapy is one of the four most common treatment modalities for cancer and is utilized in over fifty percent of all patients with cancer at some time during the course of the disease. In spite of its wide application, radiation therapy continues to be associated with a host of fears, misconceptions and misinformation regarding the treatment experience, side effects, potential for hazard to others, and even implications for prognosis. In any pediatric care setting the teaching process involves an assessment of the child’s developmental stage and cognitive abilities. Vocabulary, associations and comparisons, and the degree of detail will be determined by the individual child and parent in terms of readiness to learn, previous experience, coping style, educational level and expressed priorities for information. The educational needs of the child and family receiving radiation therapy are complicated by the challenge to explain an &dquo;invisible&dquo; phenomenon which involves complex technology. In most cases, this one-to-one teaching can be effectively enhanced by printed materials. The following annotated bibliography describes the educational resources currently available to assist in teaching the pediatric patient and family about radiation therapy.