The therapeutic pathway of families of children with cancer: difficulties faced in this journey.

Objective: To know the difficulties faced by families in the therapeutic pathway of children with cancer.

Method: Qualitative, descriptive and exploratory research, with a quantitative approach, performed from March to November 2016, through face-to-face semi-structured interviews, with 21 relatives of children undergoing oncological treatment at a federal university hospital in Rio de Janeiro, whose data were submitted to content analysis.

Results: The difficulties of these families traverse the identification and investigation by health professionals regarding the signs and symptoms of children as well as the passage of relatives through various health services until diagnostic confirmation.