The Development and Application Effects of a Fatigue Self-Care Smartphone Application for Lung Cancer Patients Receiving Chemotherapy

Purpose@#The purpose of this study was to develop a fatigue self-care smartphone application and to evaluate its effectiveness so that lung cancer patients receiving chemotherapy can reduce fatigue autonomously. @*Methods@#After reviewing literature and evaluating experts and users, it developed ‘SMART FSC (Smart Fatigue Self-Care),’ which is a self-management smartphone application for fatigue. Similar experimental studies were conducted using a non-equivalent control group non-synchronized quasi-experimental design to identify the effects of SMART FSC. The study participants were recruited in D city: 22 participants were assigned to the experimental group, and 23 to the control group. @*Results@#As a result of testing the effectiveness of the fatigue self-care smartphone application, there was a significant difference between the pre-post fatigue scores of the experimental group. In addition, the sleep satisfaction score of the experimental group with the smartphone application was different from the sleep satisfaction score of the control group. And the difference in the pre-post sleep satisfaction scores was significantly different. @*Conclusion@#Study findings indicate that the fatigue self-care smartphone application developed by this study will be effective to solve the fatigue of lung cancer patients receiving chemotherapy.

Distress of the Patients with Ostomy / 종양간호학회지

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the distress of the patients with ostomy. METHODS: A descriptive research design was adopted for data collection and analysis. Six patients with ostomy participated in the study. The consent from the participants was obtained for ethical protection. Data were collected from July 31, 2009 to January 10, 2010 using in-depth interview technique. Krippendorff's content analysis method was utilized for data analysis. RESULTS: Eight categories and 26 themes were extracted from the data which illustrated the lived distress of the patients with ostomy. The categories were "do not have any freedom to eat whatever I wish to eat", "uncontrolled defecation", "have to live through tough situation", "keep stoma in suspense", "disgusting ostomy", "can not live with comfort", "easily take a pessimistic view", and "see how the wind blows in daily family life". CONCLUSION: Ostomates were affected by the distress of having an ostomy in their physical, psychological, social and spiritual life. Individualized and continued nursing education program has to be developed in hospital and community settings in order to improve the quality of life of the ostomates.