Abstract

KIRCHNER, Luziane de Fátima; LOHR, Suzane Schmidlin  and  GUIMARAES, Ana Tereza Bittencourt. Evaluation of social skills from mothers of children with onco-hematological disease treatment. Rev. bras. crescimento desenvolv. hum. [online]. 2012, vol.22, n.2, pp. 187-195. ISSN 0104-1282.

Assessments of the social skills of mothers whose children are undergoing treatment for chronic illnesses can help design strategies to improve the quality of relationships between mothers and other people involved in the treatment (the child being treated, healthcare professionals, and other mothers) and thereby increase children's adherence to treatment. This study aimed at providing a descriptive analysis of the social skills illustrated by the responses of 20 mothers of children who were aged 5 to 11 years, suffered from blood cancers, and showed a good level of adherence to treatment. Adherence to treatment was evaluated using the ATG-BC tool and the social skills illustrated by mothers' answers were evaluated using the "If... then you..." questionnaire; both methods were designed by the researchers. The "If... then you..." questionnaire measured levels of empathy and assertiveness in nine hypothetical conflictive situations during treatment, including interactions with children, the medical team, and others. Results indicated a predominance of assertive/empathetic answers in interactions with children, non-assertive and assertive answers in interactions with the medical team, and non-assertive, assertive, and emphatic/assertive answers in interactions with others. These discrepancies between interactions confirmed that evaluations of mothers' social skills should be situation-dependent. Future studies should test the hypothesis that serious chronic illnesscan significantly affect the maternal repertoire of social skills.

Keywords : social skills; mother-child relationship; blood cancers.

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