.98 Npc Patients After Discharge Quality Of Life And Coping Styles Of Analysis

Objective: To describe the quality of life(QOL) and coping style of nasopharyngeal carcinoma(NPC) patients after therapy in hospital. And to explore the factors which influence QOL and identify the relationship between coping style and QOL of NPC patients.Methods: A descriptive correlational design was used in this study. 98 NPC patients were investigated by a convenient sampling method. Four instruments were employed for data collection. Demographic Information Sheet used to collect subject's demographic characteristics. The Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy Head and Neck (FACT-H&N) was used to measure the QOL, and the Additional Concerns Scale for supplement; the Jalowiec Coping Scale (JCS) was used to measure the Coping Style. The internal consistency were examined and resulted in Cronbach's a 0.75 for FACT-H&N and 0.85 for JCS respectively in 15 NPC patients who met the criteria before this study. Descriptive analysis, multiple linear stepwise regression and Spearman correlation analysis were performed using by the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) 10.0. Data collection was done from September 2002 to December 2002.Results: The standard score of FACT-H&N of subjects is 67.83%. Among them, the Head and Neck Subscale scored lowest with the score of 56.92%. The subjects also had some other problems except the ones reflected in FACT-H&N, such as 50.00% subjects with memory impairment, 45.92% subjects with hearing impairment etc. With the mean score of 2.09?.53, "optimistic" scored highest in JCS. Some other coping styles scored in order are"self-reliant"(1.68±0.49), "palliative" (1.51±0.60) etc. "Emotive"(0.84±0.59), "fatalistic"(0.92±0.70) and "evasive"(1.27±0.44) are coping styles with low scores in JCS. Economic income and survival time of the disease are related to the scores of FACT-H&N. Methods of therapy and gender are related to the functional well-being subscale and head and neck subscale respectively. There is a positive correlation between "optimistic", "palliative" and QOL, the co-efficient r is 0.456 and 0.324 respectively; and a negative correlation between "emotive", "fatalistic", "evasive" and QOL, the co-efficient r is -0.465, -0.427 and -0.271respectively. No significant correlation was found between "confrontive", "self-reliant", "supportanfand QOL, p>0.05.Conclusion: The side effects of radiation are still the major problems which affect the QOL of NPC patients posttherapy. Economic income, survival tune, therapy and gender are the factors influencing QOL of NPC patients in this study. Positive emotion-focused coping styles are positively correlated to QOL, passive emotion-focused ones are negatively correlated to QOL; Problem-focused coping style are not statiscally correlated to QOL among NPC patients posttherapy. The findings of this study suggest that Nurses should pay attention to the QOL of NPC patients posttherapy. This will include providing appropriate education to minimize ongoing side effects and guide patients to use right coping styles etc. To make sure these interventions implemented effectively, systematic oncology nursing in the community should be made available.