Excerpts from recorded diagnostic conversations emphasising teamwork and honesty over autonomy
| Theme | Psychologists speaking to parents during intake | Oncologists speaking to parents in diagnostic conversations |
| Teamwork | ‘You see we are all a team.’ (to parents of an child with blood cancer) ‘I want you to know that we are a team and we will always tell the truth.’ (to parents of a child with a solid tumour) ‘In here, each doctor has his specialty…each of them in their own working area, but we are still a team.’ (to parents of a child with blood cancer) | ‘We want to remark that we are a team…and we are all here to support you. We are a big team so one of us will be ready to answer all your questions. No matter if it’s good or bad, you deserve to know it.’ (to parents of a child with blood cancer) ‘We are a lot of people that work for all children’s recovery…There’s a huge hope and you have the entire medical staff and the hospital staff next to you, working together to make [your son] better.’ (to parents of a child with blood cancer) |
| Honesty | ‘We will be very honest with you; we won’t lie to you…Anything that comes up, I’ll let you know’ (to parents of a child with a solid tumour) ‘I know no one likes bad news, but as a parent you deserve the truth…Like I told you, doctors will be very honest with you.’ (to parents of a teenager with brain cancer) ‘Here, they will always tell you everything.’ (to parents of a child with blood cancer) | ‘Another important thing. We are always going to be very honest with you, if anything comes up, we will seat down with you and talk to you.’ (to parents of a teenager with blood cancer) ‘We won’t lie to you, of course it’s going to be hard, this is going to feel like a roller coaster, there will be good days and there will be hard days, but we will be with you on good days and hard days.’ (to parents of a teenager with blood cancer) |
| Lack of choice | ‘What we definitely have to do is surgery, that’s essential to cure this type of cancer.’ (to parents of a child with a solid tumour) ‘Therefore, is so important that once we detect it, we must give treatment immediately.’ (to parents of a child with blood cancer) ‘With these, the only treatment is surgery…If we want to save [your son], we must perform the surgery.’ (to parents of a teenager with a solid tumour) | ‘Unfortunately, he must stay here for now, but after a while he’ll be able to go home for some time or to the shelter.’ (to parents of a child with blood cancer) ‘It’s going to be difficult, because I'm not telling you it’s going to be easy or that don’t have to make sacrifices, but if you want to see [your daughter] cured, just like us, this is the road we must follow.’ (to parents of a child with blood cancer) |