Authors: Wahyu Dewi Sulistyarini, M.S, Chi-Yin Kao, PhD., RN.
Background: Patients with advanced cancer may experience many symptoms in their life including physical, psychological, and spiritual problems. Researchers point out that palliative care should be provided to these patients focusing on comfort, pain control and enhancing patients’ quality of life. The focus on palliative care is to care for patients as well as possible before they die, by understanding their problems in physical, psychological and their spiritual aspects.
Objective: To examine advanced cancer patients’ condition including symptom distress, anxiety, depression and spiritual well-being.
Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted with convenience sampling in Central Java, Indonesia. The survey questionnaire included demographic data, clinical information, Symptom Distress Scale (SDS) - English version, the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy- Spiritual Well-Being (FACIT-Sp-12) – Indonesian version and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) – Indonesian version. The original English version of SDS questionnaire was translated into Indonesian. Descriptive statistics were used to present each variable and Pearson correlation was used to evaluate the relationship between variables.
Result: A total of 363 patients with advanced cancer were recruited. After translated to Indonesian version of SDS questionnaire, we found value of content validity index was 0.95. Appetite, fatigue and pain were three major distress symptoms among patients while only less than 20% patients experienced mild and moderate anxiety and depression. Patients had a high spiritual well-being (M=38.01). Furthermore, there was a significant correlation between HADS with SDS and HADS with FACIT-Sp-12.
Conclusion: The findings represent advanced cancer patients’ condition regarding physical, psychological and their spiritual aspects. It can assist healthcare professionals to understand advanced cancer patients’ degrees of symptom distress, the levels of anxiety and depression and states of spiritual well-being which will provide better care for advanced cancer patients.
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