The Study of Perceived Stress, Parent-Adolescent Communication, and Family Resilience among Cancer Patients and Their Spouses

• Main Authors: Chen, Wei-Ching, 陳薇淨
• Other Authors: Chen, Chin-Mi
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/n2pte7

碩士 === 國防醫學院 === 護理研究所 === 102 === Background: A life-threatening disease not only affects these patients, but also causes an enormous psychological stress and impact to their spouse and children who are not yet independent. It is very important to confront the stress resulted from the disease for family with cancer parents. Purpose: This study aimed to examine the relationships among perceived stress, parent-adolescent communication, and family resilience of cancer patinents and their spouses who rasing 12 to 25 year old children. Method: The theoretical perspective of this study was family resilience framework (Walsh, 2003). The panel study design was used. Eighty-four cancer patients and their spouses were recruited in this study by convenience sampling. Data were collected by a questionnaire across three time-points with an interval of two months. Thirty cancer patients and their spouses completed three surveys. Results: The results of this study were as below: 1) perceived stress ( B = -0.33, SE = 0.14,95% CI = -0.60 ~ -0.06), parent-child communication (B = 0.64, SE = 0.10,95% CI = 0.44 ~ 0.84) were the correlates of family resilience in cancer patients ; 2) for cancer patients and their spouses, perceived stress was negatively correlated with parent-adolescent communication, and family resilience. However, parent-adolescent communication was positively correlated with family resilience. 3) If cancer patients perceived most support from their spouses, their family resilience would be significantly higher than support from others except spouses (B = 7.95, SE = 2.37, 95% CI = 3.31 ~ 12.6). 4) Family resilience among cancer patients and their spouses were significant positive correlated (Spearman r = 0.31 ~ 0.62, p < 0.01). 5) Besides, we also found that the degree of parent-adolescent communication perceived by fathers was significantly lower than mothers. Conclusion: We identify that the risk factor of family resilience was perceived stress and protector was parent-adolescent communication for cancer patients. According to the findings, we suggested healthcare providers to early detect families at high risk for adaptation to construct appropriate family-center care and to evaluate the effect of this family intervention on nurturing family resilience in the future.