Resilience and Related Factors for Patients with Breast Cancer

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to examine factors influencing resilience in breast cancer patients. METHODS: The data were collected using structured questionnaires from 106 breast cancer patients who are members of a self-help group. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, a t-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficients and stepwise multiple regression in SPSS WIN version 21.0. RESULTS: Resilience was significantly negatively correlated to depression and positively correlated to hope and family support. However, resilience was not significantly correlated to anxiety. In the regression analysis, factors influencing resilience were reported as hope, religion, lymph node metastasis, surgery side, and time since surgery, which explained 34.1% of the variation. CONCLUSION: The resilience scores of women with breast cancer were higher when depression was lower, hope was higher, and greater family support. This means that reducing depression and increasing hope and family support are necessary when developing and implementing nursing interventions. The results of this study also show the importance of hope in explaining resilience in patients with breast cancer. Therefore, nurses should focus on encouraging hope when they develop programs in order to implement more effective interventions to improve breast cancer patients' resilience.