| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 心理學系 === 107 === Background: Worry represents “an attempt to engage in mental problem-solving on an issue whose outcome is uncertain but contains the possibility of one or more negative outcomes.” Due to the uncertainty of the disease and following treatments, cancer patients usually experienced “worry”. However, there were few measurements to evaluate worry in the preoperative period, which had been found one of the most stressful time for patients and maybe an effective phase for intervention. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to develop a “Preoperative Cancer Patient’s Worry Scale (PCPWS)”.
Methods: Three hundred and forty-eight cancer patients, 173 breast cancer patients (all female) and 175 head and neck cancer patients (140 males, and 35 females), who admitted to the medical center for operation were included in the study. Participants were asked to fill the PCPWS and distress thermometer one day before surgery, and followed up by WHOQOL at 1, 3, and 6 months after the surgery.
Results: Results of the exploratory factor analysis showed that the PCPWS is composed of two factors “social role (5-items)” and “disease burden (6-items)”, both factors had good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α= .88 and.87). The results of the confirmatory factor analysis also showed the PCPWS had good construct validity. As to criterion-related validity, “social role” and “disease burden” both had significant positively relations with emotional distress and fear measures supported the PCPWS had good concurrent validity. The significant predictions of the “social role” to the physical and the mental QOL at three months after operation in breast cancer patients, and to the social and the environmental QOL at one month after operation in head and neck cancer patients supported a good predictive validity.
Discussion and Conclusion: In conclusion, the PCPWS has good psychometrics properties and is a suitable instrument to evaluate worry in cancer patients during the preoperative period in clinical settings. Although participants were worrier in “disease burden” than in “social role” (t = 15.59, p < .001), but “social role” was a better predictor to QOL after surgery. These results reflected that although cancer patients did worry more about their “disease burden”, but worries in their “social role” was a stronger predictor to their QOL afterwards. Thus, it is important for us to attend to patients’ “social role” worries during the pre-operative period. However, due to the relatively small sample size, the process from “social role” worries to QOL remain unclear. Future study is needed to further clarify the process.
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