ABSTRACT
Self-care education can direct patients to manage their side effects during treatment, reduce psychological distress, and improve self-care information. In this study, the effectiveness of the Self-Care Education Intervention Program (SCEIP) on patient activation levels, psychological distress, and treatment-related concerns in women with breast cancer was assessed by adopting a longitudinal quasi-experimental pre-test and post-test design. The data for 246 women with breast cancer undergoing adjuvant chemotherapy were collected. Pre- and post-interventional assessments were conducted at baseline (T1) and the second (T2), fourth (T3), and sixth (T4) cycles using the 13-item Patient Activation Measure, 14-item Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and 25-item Cancer Treatment Survey. It was found that the SCEIP significantly improved the activation level (p ≤ 0.001), psychological distress (anxiety level (p ≤ 0.001), the depression level (p ≤ 0.001)), and treatment-related concerns (sensory/psychological concerns (p = 0.05); procedural concerns (p ≤ 0.001)). Therefore, the SCEIP could potentially improve patients' activation level, psychological distress, and treatment-related concerns regarding symptom management during chemotherapy, specifically for Malaysian women with breast cancer.
ABSTRACT
The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic since its onset has had a dramatic and often devastating impact, both physical and psychological, on all healthcare workers. This study aimed to assess the impact of psychological distress that COVID-19 has on nurses, as well as the coping strategies that they employed. This is a cross-sectional national online survey. A total of 859 nurses actively involved in caring for patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 in Malaysia participated in the study. More than three-quarters of the nurses experienced stress (77.2%). A total of 88.7% and 7.2% of nurses revealed a moderate and high stress level, respectively. Approximately one in eight (12.1%) nurses reported feeling depressed. Nurses working in the outpatient departments reported significantly higher stress levels than nurses working in inpatient care departments. Nurses having chronic health problems reported significantly higher depression levels than nurses with no chronic health problem. Highly stressed or depressed nurses tend to adopt avoidance coping strategies while religion and emotional support were used regardless of the stress or depression levels experienced. The findings of the study provide insight into the mental health and coping strategies of nurses actively involved in caring for patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 in Malaysia. This would be of tremendous help to nursing administrators in implementing mental health services for nurses during and following the COVID-19 global pandemic.
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: Acceptance and action questionnaire (AAQ II) is a scale used to assess psychological inflexibility. The aim of this study is to translate AAQ II into Malay language and evaluate the psychometric properties of AAQ II Malay version. METHODS: The AAQ II which has been translated into Malay language via back translation procedure was distributed to 101 cancer patients and 100 non-cancer patients. The evaluation of psychometric properties in this study included content validity index, internal consistency, parallel reliability, exploratory factor analysis, concurrent validity, sensitivity and specificity of AAQ II Malay version. RESULTS: AAQ II Malay version has established good content validity index, acceptable internal consistency with Cronbach's alpha value of 0.91, excellent parallel reliability and adequate concurrent validity. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) results demonstrated AAQ II Malay version is a unidimensional factor instrument. The result of sensitivity and specificity of AAQ II Malay version indicated cancer patients who scored more than 17.5 were having significant psychological inflexibility. CONCLUSION: AAQ II Malay version is a reliable and valid instrument to measure psychological inflexibility among cancer patient in Malaysia.
Subject(s)
Neoplasms/psychology , Quality of Life , Surveys and Questionnaires , Adult , Female , Humans , Malaysia , Male , Middle Aged , PsychometricsABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: This study was performed to assess patient symptoms prevalence, frequency and severity, as well as distress and coping strategies used, and to identify the relationships between coping strategies and psychological and physical symptoms distress and demographic data of cancer patients. This cross-sectional descriptive study involved a total of 268 cancer patients with various types of cancer and chemotherapy identified in the oncology unit of an urban tertiary hospital. 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.