Narratives of patients with skull base tumors and their family members: lessons for nursing practice.

The meaning of the experience of being told you or a family member have/has a serious brain tumor was revealed during a descriptive research study conducted to determine preoperative education needs. Eighteen patients and 15 family members participated immediately following the office visit with the neurosurgeon and/or on admission to hospital, for a total of 29 interviews and 13 questionnaires. Twenty-four interviews were conducted with 13 patients and 11 family members in the pre-discharge phase of the research. The key themes of hearing the news, education needs and information needs were identified through content analysis of transcribed interviews and questionnaire data. Patients and family members portrayed experiences, revealed emotions related to hearing the news, and shared ways of coping. Interviews with patients and their family members that contained clear narratives were identified. From these interviews, three sets of narratives were selected. Each of the narratives was analyzed to determine how the patients and their key family members articulated and made sense of the diagnosis and surgical treatment of a skull base tumor. The themes of a sense of comfort, the known is better than the unknown, waiting for news of the surgical outcome, and quality of recovery emerged from the analysis. Lessons learned about the individuality of patients' and family members' needs and approaches to support effective coping were identified.