Spiritual well-being of Filipino patients with cancer

ABSTRACT

@#Cancer is a serious disease that leads to physical, psychosocial, and spiritual difficulties. Filipinos' high reverence to God can affect their health-related behaviors and responses to illnesses like cancer. Though studies have shown the association of spirituality and quality of life, very few have been conducted in Filipino cancer patients. This study aimed to describe their spiritual well-being in terms of the personal, communal, environmental, and transcendental domains; and compare spiritual well-being across different patient characteristics (i.e. type of cancer, stage of cancer, type of treatment, and the period since first symptoms are felt) as input to determining patients at risk for spiritual distress. A descriptive cross-sectional design was utilized with 87 conveniently sampled respondents. A researcher-developed questionnaire and the Spiritual Health and Well-being Measure© (SHALOM) instrument were used to collect data. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Kruskal Wallis H Test. Majority of the respondents were below 50 years old, female, married or with a common-law partner, had at least a high school education, unemployed, did not have enough income to support basic needs, Catholic, and an active member in the church. Most of them had colorectal cancer, were in Stage III, first felt symptoms 6 months to 1 year prior to the conduct of the study, and received a combination of treatments. In terms of personal state, the patients had the highest spiritual well-being in the Transcendental Domain which describes one’s relationship with God. The second-highest spiritual well-being level was found to be the communal domain followed by personal, and environmental domains. Significant differences were found in the spiritual well-being scores in the 4 domains across the types of cancer, with the lowest scores among those with head and neck cancer. Filipino patients in the study had high spiritual well-being despite the presence of cancer. Patient characteristics, especially their illness profile, should be considered in developing nursing interventions that may improve their spiritual well-being.