[Conflict and divorce management in the field of pediatric care. Experience in pediatric oncology.]

Divorces and separations have become more frequent over the last 20 years and for this reason they are issues of great importance with possible effects on medical treatments. Conflicts between the adults frequently affect the children involved in the separation of their parents. If, on the one hand, the parental conflict is a hard and distressing experience for the whole family, on the other hand this situation gets even more complicated if a child is affected by a serious illness. Since there is a lack of studies about the management arrangements of these situations, this article aims to illustrate the experiences gained in a pediatric ward of a big oncology hospital and the appropriate multidisciplinary management arrangements. These experiences, however, can be applied also in other contexts where children are being treated and where the conflict between parents can either produce different difficulties in the performance of the therapy or prejudice the child's serenity.