A Study, on the Quality, of Life, Family, Support and Hope of Hospitalized and Home Care Cancer Patients

Jo, Kae Wha; Kim, Myung Ja

Abstract

With the occurrence of cancer, most cancer patients experience various emotional changes such as anxiety, depression, and emotional shock. Especially in our country, cancer has been recognized as an incurable disease resulting in death. The number of cancer patients increases daily. But as the survival rate of cancer patients is also increasing, there is a need to find the better methods of nursing care for cancer patients. The purposes of this paper are as follows : 1) To understand family support and hope and quality of life for the cancer patient both during hospitalization and at home. 2) To determine the relationship between family support, hope and quality of life. To examine the problems, we used a questionnaire and obtained data form the records of 45 home care and 94 hospitalized(in 3 university hospitals) Patients in Taegu area from the period of June 15 to August 15, 1996. SPSS /PC was used for the data analysis and the statistical methods used were the T-test and ANOVA. The results of this paper are as follow : 1 ) In the aspect of family support, there is no difference between hospitalized and home care cancer patients(t=1.63, P>0.01 ). 2) In the aspect of hope, hospitalized cancer patients have a higher score than home care cancer patients (t=3.08, P>0.01 ) 3) In the aspect of quality of life, hospitalized cancer patients have a higher score than home care patients(t=2.96, P<.01). 4) There is a correlation between quality of life and hope with a correlation coefficient r=0.5199 and P=0.000. In addition. the correlation coefficient between quality of life and family support is 4179 with P =0.000. 5) The family support of the cancer patient is influenced by sex(F=9.1863, P<0.01), education(F=4.3641, P<0.01) and the level of life (F=5.5002, P<0.01 ). 6) The hope of cancer patients is influenced by the number of hospitalizations (F=3.6413, P<.05), education(F=B.01 13, P<.01 ) and the level of life (F=5.0649, P <.01 ). 7) The quality of life of cancer patients is influenced by the number of hospitalization( F=5.1167, P<0.05), education( F=3.1590, P<0.01 ) and the level of life (F=5.6942, P<1.01 ).