The 2002 Schering Lecture: Children’s cancer symptom experiences: Keeping the spirit alive in children and their families
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Despite the finding that each child and family experienced cancer in their own unique way, they all shared the need to maintain a sense of spirit. Just as the suffering united the families, so too did their sense of spirit. Talk of the spirit is not foreign in the pediatric oncology literature. Statements such as "the children's responses suggest a resolute spirit that accepts cancer and goes on with life" (Hockenberry-Eaton & Minick, 1994, p.1030) are dispersed throughout the literature and reinforce the importance of the spirit in children and families experiencing childhood cancer. Yet despite this, the spirit in children with cancer has received minimal attention from researchers (Woodgate, 2001). The focus has been solely directed at studying the sense of self in children. In fact, some would even argue that the spirit can be equated with one's sense of self. There is also the feeling that the spirit is something that does not exist. How could it be "real" when it has never been seen or even measured in research? However, just because something cannot be seen or measured, does not mean that it does not exist. As was revealed by the families participating in my study, there was a spirit within them that got them through the cancer experience, especially during times of increased symptom distress. Research that seeks to describe the "spirit within" of children and families who are going through many of life's challenges is warranted. This includes understanding the conceptualization of the spirit from the perspectives of children experiencing illness. Although understanding spirituality and spiritual distress is beginning to be studied in children experiencing illness (Pehler, 1997), children's perspectives are usually not accessed. By developing a deeper understanding of the "spirit within," oncology nurses and other professionals caring for children with cancer may be able to provide more sensitive and comprehensive care. They will have a better understanding to nursing the spirit. So to conclude, let us as oncology nurses continue to help families maintain their sense of spirit. And yes, let us maintain a sense of spirit within ourselves. We could learn from the families we care for with respect to how to nurture our spirits and the spirits of those close to us. Taking care, holding on to the belief, taking one day at a time, and so on, are all strategies that we could learn to incorporate more frequently into our daily lives. May a part of the spirits of those we care for be with us and live on in us forever, because their lingering spirits are sources of hope and strength, as this mother reinforced.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".