How Classmates Experience Visiting Their Hospitalised Peer During Cancer Treatment: A RESPECT Study.
Natasha Nybro Boensvang, Martin Kaj Fridh, Claire Elizabeth Wakefield and 2 others
PMID 40524522WHAT IT FOUND
Classmates visiting hospitalised peers felt excited and motivated to support them, but needed nurse briefings and adult backup to handle uncertainty, hospital rules and the child’s changing condition.
Key findings
01Classmates felt excited and motivated to support the hospitalized child, and a prior close friendship was not required.
02Nurses’ briefings and adult presence helped classmates manage uncertainty about hospital routines and the child’s condition.
03After visits, classmates were often quiet or tired, yet still said seeing their peer was nice.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
This is a qualitative study of classmates’ and children’s experiences, so it does not show that peer visits improve outcomes for hospitalized children. Participants were recruited by convenience from a Danish RESPECT program and had to speak Danish, so the findings may not fit other settings. The study included 27 classmates and 16 children across 19 visits, which is a small group for describing all peer-visit experiences. The broader RESPECT intervention was not piloted or tested before implementation. Interviews were conducted in cars while the researcher drove, so facial and body cues could be missed, and one ambassador later expressed discomfort. The researcher’s presence during observations may have influenced the children’s interactions, and the interpretation was made by adults.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. Funding came from Børnecancerfonden, the Danish Childhood Cancer Foundation, the Danish Cancer Society and the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that ambassador visits improve hospitalized children’s social outcomes or school re-entry. This study only describes classmates’ experiences, reports no measured outcomes for the hospitalized children, and was embedded in an intervention that was not piloted or tested beforehand.