Summary: | 碩士 === 國立暨南國際大學 === 社會政策與社會工作學系 === 106 === Oral cancer is one of the cancers most often seen in the male in Taiwan, and it is a cancer
that occupies the first five cancer occurrence rate and fatality rate in males in Taiwan.
Actually, oral cancer is called the No. 1 killer of men in middle age! According to this paper’s
researcher as well as a great number of study findings, oral cancer patients’ experience
sharing can help the cancer patients and their family to adjust to the illness and face their life.
At this point, oral cancer patient volunteers play this kind of role. In this sense, the purpose of
this research aims to discuss the motivation of and reasons why oral cancer patients are
willing to become a help giver. Besides, this research also targets at the oral cancer patients’
subjective experiences and feelings when they carry out such helping work, and probes into
their viewpoints of self-role change in the process of helping others.
This research adopted qualitative research method. Through in-depth interviews, totally
6 male oral cancer patient volunteers in Sunshine Social Welfare Foundation were
interviewed. They were all in or above the second cancer stage, and had taken part in
volunteering service for at least one year. Based on the research findings, regarding their help
receiving, oral cancer patients who had received formal supporting system considered that
medical service, nutrition supplement, and national health insurance were more helpful
service items. On the other hand, the services that needed to improve include incomplete
post-operative health education, the restricted governmental assistance, human labor with
high turnover rate in the institutes, failure in meeting the cases’ needs, and the limited
resources in non-profit organizations.
What’s more, informal supporting system offered assistance like emotional support,
self-encouragement, daily life care, learning and imitation, work opportunities, economic
assistance, and so on. Concerning emergence of helping other patients, as a lot of literature
shows, oral cancer patient volunteers had multiple participation motivations, including
gratitude and repayment, institute’s invitation, self-interest factors, altruistic factors, mutual
interest and mutual benefit factors, and influence from oral cancer patient group. As
experiences accumulated with time, due to help receiving and giving experiences, the initial
motivation of the volunteers would change in the later stage.
As for experiences of helping other patients, it could be seen that oral cancer patient
volunteers had three service types, which were formal volunteering service group, task-force
oral cancer prevention propaganda team, and personal good deeds. These three types
represented different service intensity for the oral cancer patients to take part in different
service types based on their intention, illness stability, and individual characteristics.
Lastly, role change was obviously related to the volunteers’ service experiences, need
satisfaction degree, service gain, and motivation. When oral cancer patients play the role of
“help receiver” and “help giver”, the two roles were not absolutely separated; rather, they
were overlapped in some respects. The 6 interviewees also showed difference facets because
of the personal characteristics, need satisfaction degree, motivation of helping others, and
service gains.
This research expects to show subjective experiences of the oral cancer patient
volunteers’, hoping that the volunteers employment unit can balance the volunteers’ role need,
rights, and interests. In the meantime, according to literature analysis, research results and
findings, this research have proposed suggestions through two aspects—oral cancer service,
and oral cancer patient volunteer employment unite—in order to provide reference to the
professional personnel and relative research.
|