Symptom Distress and Spiritual Well-Being in Patients with Cancer according to Illness and Treatment

Bae, Su Hyun; Park, Jeong Sook

Abstract

PURPOSE: This study was done to analyze symptom distress and spiritual well-being in patients with cancer according cancer diagnosis, metastasis, treatment stage, number of hospitalizations and treatment modality. METHOD: The participants, 285 patients being treated in one of ten general hospitals either as in- or out-patients, completed the McCorkle and Young (1978) Symptom Distress Scale translated and adapted by Uhm (1986) and the Spiritual Well-Being Scale by Paloutzian and Ellison (1982) translated by Choi (1990). Data collection was done from June 19 to September 30, 2006.
RESULTS
For symptom distress, there were significant differences for cancer diagnosis (p=.018), metastasis (p=.000), treatment stage (p=.000), number of hospitalizations (p=.000), and treatment modality (p=.002). For spiritual well-being, the only significant difference was for cancer diagnosis (p=.002). Patients with ovarian/uterine cancer had the lowest spiritual well-being.
CONCLUSION
For patients with cancer, symptom distress was significantly different for illness and treatment factors, in particular, stage of illness, while for spiritual well-being, patients with uterine ovarian cancer had the lowest spiritual level. These results indicate a need to develop nursing interventions to decrease symptom distress in patients according to treatment stage and to promote spiritual well-being, particularly in women with ovarian/uterine cancer.