| Summary: | 碩士 === 中山醫學大學 === 護理研究所 === 98 === Facing treatment the of the breast cancer patients who have to confront the symptoms of treatment & the distress of the physical, spiritual & social activity, For them “Status of Hope” should be the main strength & internal resource to overcome those distress & symptoms, but there are a lots of factor influencing patient “ Hope” level.The purpose of this study is to understand the symptom distress and hope level of breast cancer patients, and to explore the correlations between demographic characteristics, characteristics of the disease, status of hope, and symptom distress of breast cancer patients. This study was conducted with the cross-sectional description of correlations and was designed with convenience sampling. The place was the Outpatient Breast Surgical Department and the Outpatient Chemotherapy Room at a certain medical center in Taichung. Structured questionnaires were used as the means of data collection. study period from July 2009 to October 2009. A total of 130 valid samples was collected. The research was based on the patient individual basic document table, the symptom distress scale, and the Herth Hope Index. The collected materials were calculated and analyzed statistically by coding and SPSS for the Window 12.0 edition. Descriptive statistics, percentage, averaging, and standard deviation were used to describe the backgrounds of the patients, the degree of symptom distress, and the degree of hope status. Wilcoxon rank sum Kruskal Wallis test, Spearman’s correlation and multiple regression were used to describe the correlations between demographic characteristics, characteristics of the disease, and the degree of symptom distress.
Findings from this research can be summarized as follows. (1). The average score of patients’ symptom distress is 44.7, which can be characterized as mild. (2). The average score of patients’ hope status is 37.3, characterized as moderate. (3). Concerning the variable of disease characteristics, self consciousness of disease severity and symptom distress are significantly different and show a positive correlation. The higher the patient’s self consciousness of disease severity is, the higher his/her symptom distress is. (4). Regarding the difference analysis of demographic characteristics and disease characteristics, there is a significant statistical difference between age, marital status, self consciousness of disease severity, and hope status. Patients of younger age, having a spouse, and low self consciousness of disease severity show higher hope state. (5). With the use of Spearman’s correlation, symptom distress and status of hope are found significantly different and show a negative correlation.
The findings of this research can assist nurses in understanding breast cancer patients’symptom distresses and status of hope and thus offer correct instructions to the patients. Moreover, the results may help nurses give individualized nursing to the patients based on different characteristics of the patients in order to reduce the patients’ symptom distresses and to enhance patients’ status of hope. The findings are beneficial to nursing practice and nursing education.
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