Feasibility and Desirability: Discussion of Drs. Martinson, Nesbit and Kersey’s Paper

Abstract

For almost a decade, a home care project for the dying child with cancer in Minneapolis, Minnesota has been underway with careful concurrent and prospective evaluation. The project in both its phases will long stand as the paradigm of good, justified and compassionate research, combining the best tradition of nursing with the best traditions of inquiry. Precisely because of its excellence in execution and consequent plethora of data, the project does generate reflection and reaction. There were two basic hypotheses tested among several goals (Martinson, 1976, 1977). First, is it feasible to use the home setting for care of children with late stage cancer? Once that was answered in the affirmative, the question turned to the hypothesis that such home care was indeed desirable and, if that were answered affirmatively, the final engineering question was joined whether such home care could be institutionalized through existing health care organizations? There is an interesting full circle quality to that sequence of investigations.