The Influencing Factors of Uncertainty among Breast Cancer Patients

• Main Authors: May-Yun-Lee, 李美雲
• Other Authors: NANLY HSU
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/54563959425405871114

碩士 === 慈濟大學 === 護理學研究所 === 90 === The purpose of this descriptive study was to understand the degree of uncertainty among breast cancer patients, their social support, resources, and their understanding of chemotherapy, the influencing factors and the significant predictors of uncertainty. By means of cross-sectional study and purposive sampling, the researcher chose 92 breast cancer patients in a southern medical center from among those who prepared to receive chemotherapy, who were receiving chemotherapy, and who had completed. The instruments included “Personal Data Questionnaire”, “Mishel uncertainty in illness scale”, “Social support scale”, and “Chemotherapy knowledge scale” .Data was collected from December 13, 2001, to April 25, 2002, and analyzed it by using SPSS for Windows 8.0. The results showed the average score of the “Uncertainty in illness scale” among the 92 breast cancer patients was 2.61, which showed a low to intermediate degree of uncertainty, with “I can’t predict the course of my disease.” as the most uncertain item among these patients. Patients demonstrated intermediate to high degree of social support with the average score of 3.04, among which the “appraisal support” achieved the highest score - the patients’ spouses and family were the primary resources of social support. In addition, the overall uncertainty and ambiguity, complexity uncertainty showed negative correlation with social support; the overall uncertainty and ambiguity uncertainty exhibited negative correlation with the understanding of chemotherapy; while the social support and understanding of chemotherapy revealed positive correlation. The operative procedure with breast reconstruction, self-awareness of disease severity, education, present illness, social support and the understanding of chemotherapy proved important as predictive variables for illness uncertainty, which could explain 41.6% of the whole variance. From this study, the investigator hope that the nursing staff can realize the uncertainty and its influencing factors among breast cancer patients who are facing disease and the therapeutic strategy, and refer to it when taking care of them, in order to improve our nursing quality and strengthen patients’ adaptive ability.