MATERIALS AND METHODS: Data were collected using questionnaires (demographic questionnaire, Medical characteristics, Memorial Symptom Assessment Scale (MSAS) and Brief COPE scales and analyzed for demographic, and disease-related variable effects on symptom prevalence, severity, distress and coping strategies.
RESULTS: Symptom prevalence was relatively high and ranged from 14.9% for swelling of arms and legs to 88.1% for lack of energy. This latter was the highest rated symptom in the study. The level of distress was found to be low in three domains. Problem-focused coping strategies were found to be more commonly employed compared to emotion-focused strategies, demonstrating significant associations with sex, age group, educational levels and race. However, there was a positive correlation between emotion-focused strategies and physical and psychological distress, indicating that patients would choose emotion-focused strategies when symptom distress increased.
CONCLUSIONS: These findings demonstrate that high symptom prevalence rates and coping strategies used render an improvement in current nursing management. Therefore development of symptoms management groups, encouraging the use of self-care diaries and enhancing the quality of psycho- oncology services provided are to be recommended.
METHOD: The clinical trial was conducted at University Malaya Medical Centre between 2006 and 2008. The experimental group underwent a 4-week self management program, and the control group underwent usual care. Two years after the intervention, questionnaires were randomly posted out to the participants.
RESULTS: A total of 51 questionnaires returned. There were statistically differences between groups in psychological, self-care, mobility and participation aspects in PIPP (p<0.05). The experimental group reported having higher confidence to live with breast cancer compared to control group (p<0.05). There were significant between-group changes in anxiety scores at T2 (immediately after intervention) to T4 (two years later), and the differences in anxiety scores within groups between time point T2 and T4 were significantly different (p<0.05).
CONCLUSION: The SAMA program is potentially capable to serve as a model intervention for successful transition to survivorship following breast cancer treatment. The program needs to be further tested for efficacy in a larger trial involving more diverse populations of women completing breast cancer treatment.