The treatment of childhood cancer: unveiling the experience of parents.

Objective: to understand the experiences of parents of children and adolescents with cancer undergoing treatment.

Method: qualitative research, based on Heidegger's existential phenomenology, in which 13 parents of eight patients under 19 years of age, assisted by a charity association, were interviewed.

Results: three topics resulted from the analysis: "Experiencing the unpleasantness of the treatment"; "Fearing the possibility of a frightening situation" and "Experiencing the carelessness of another person".

[Meaning of the death/dying process for entering nursing students].

This is a qualitative study, based on Heidegger's existential phenomenology, with the purpose of revealing the meaning of death/dying for freshmen students of the nursing program. The study was developed in a public university in the northwest of Paraná, Brazil between August and October 2010, and 33 entering students from a Nursing program were interviewed. The following existential themes emerged from the phenomenological analysis: "Understanding death as a difficult process to be understood"; "Understanding death as a natural process"; and "Perceiving death as a passage to another life".