Attention to the Needs of Cancer Patients' Families

Abstract

An illness like cancer impacts not only the patient, but also the entire family context, provoking changes and requiring reorganization of the family dynamics to incorporate the necessary patient care and treatment into daily activities. Families experience great difficulty in dealing with a disease like cancer, which causes enormous suffering that increases as the disease progresses. The precarious social, economic, and cultural conditions of patients and families further aggravate the social vulnerability caused by the disease. The current article aims to identify the need for health professionals that provide cancer care to patients to also incorporate the family as the target of their care, with particular attention to the family's limits and possibilities for dealing with the disease. There is a clear need to build spaces for family members to participate throughout the patient's treatment process, during which they learn to both give and receive comprehensive and quality care.