مقالات پذیرفته شده در هفتمین کنگره بین المللی زیست پزشکی
Investigating pain self-care behaviors in cancer patients referred to the oncology wards of Vali-E-Asr and Mousavi Hospitals of Zanjan, Iran 2021
Investigating pain self-care behaviors in cancer patients referred to the oncology wards of Vali-E-Asr and Mousavi Hospitals of Zanjan, Iran 2021
Melika Noori,1Mahsa Nouri,2Dr . Masoomeh Namadian,3Dr . Nasrin Bahraminejad,4,*
1. Student of surgical technology, Nursing and Midwifery school, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran 2. Department of Medical Surgical Nursing, Zanjan Nursing and Midwifery School, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences Zanjan, Iran 3. Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Medicine, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran 4. Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran
Introduction: Cancer pain is a distressing symptom for patients and their families that is poorly managed worldwide. Systematic reviews indicate that cancer pain affects approximately 48% of patients with early-stage cancer and increases to between 64 and 75% of patients with advanced disease. Pain is often moderate-to-severe for many patients and can be caused directly by the cancer lesion or by anticancer treatments. Pain negatively impacts patients' quality of life, daily activities, relationships, sleep, appetite, mental health, perception of therapy effectiveness, disease status, quality of services, and even survival. Despite that cancer can be a terminal disease, patients should not be denied the opportunity to live productively and free of pain. Poor pain management places a significant emotional and cost burden on patients, their families, and the healthcare system, with pain being the most common reason for cancer patients to use emergency health services. A wide variety of pain management techniques are available today, which have shifted from simple methods to self-care over time. Considering that the utilization of effective interventions to control pain in cancer patients requires the identification of the existing self-care status, this descriptive cross-sectional study aimed to determine the level of pain self-care behaviors in cancer patients by identifying their existing self-care status.
Methods: This descriptive-cross-sectional study was conducted in 2021 after receiving ethical approval from the Vice-Chancellor for research at Zanjan University of Medical Sciences (Ethics No. IR.ZUMS.REC.1400.290). A total of 152 cancer patients hospitalized in the oncology departments of Vali-E-Asr and Ayatollah Mousavi Hospitals were non-randomly recruited using the convenience sampling method. Data were collected using the Pain Self-Care Behavior Questionnaire (PSCBQ). The data were first entered into the IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, version 22 (IBM Corp., Armonk, N.Y., USA) and then analyzed using descriptive (Mean, standard deviation, and median) and inferential statistics (Shapiro-Wilk test, and chi-squared test).
Results: The results showed that the self-care behaviors mostly used by the participants consisted of reducing the activity level (79.6%), taking sedatives (75.0%), watching TV (73.0%), napping (72.4%), asking for help (66.4%), and reducing working hours (65.1%). In terms of the effectiveness of self-care behavior in pain relief, the use of sedatives (with a mean score of 6.42 ± 2.31), reducing the activity level (with a mean score of 5.61 ± 2.46), and asking for help (with a mean score of 51.51 ± 2.09) constituted the most effective self-care behavior used for pain relief, respectively.
Conclusion: The findings of the present study indicated that participants' pain self-care was at a low-to-moderate level. The most common self-care behaviors used by participants were reducing activity levels, taking sedatives, watching TV, and napping, the most efficient and effective of which were the consumption of sedatives and reducing the level of activity. Considering the effect of the application of pain self-care behaviors in participants, the design and implementation of patient education programs and the application of effective strategies of pain self-care are necessary. Therefore, it is possible to play an essential role in improving the quality of life of cancer patients by reducing and controlling the complications of their disease.