Patients’ quality of life during active cancer treatment: a qualitative study

Abstract

BackgroundPatients’ quality of life has become a major objective of care in oncology. At the same time, it has become the object of increasing interest by researchers, working with both quantitative and qualitative methods. Progress in oncology has enabled more patients to survive longer, so that cancer is increasingly often a chronic disease that requires long-term treatment that can have negative effects on patients’ quality of daily life. Nonetheless, no qualitative study has explored what patients report affects their quality of daily life during the treatment period. This study is intended to fill this gap.MethodsWe conducted a multicenter qualitative study based on 30 semi-structured interviews. Participants, purposively selected until data saturation, had diverse types of cancer and had started treatment at least 6 months before interview. Data were examined by thematic analysis.ResultsOur analysis found two themes: (1) what negatively affected for patient’s quality of daily life during the treatment period, a question to which patients responded by talking only about the side effects of treatment; and (2) what positively affected their quality of daily life during the treatment period with three sub-themes: (i) The interest in having —investing in — a support object that can be defined as an object, a relationship or an activity particularly invested by the patients which makes them feel good and makes the cancer and its treatment bearable, (ii)The subjective perception of the efficacy of the antitumor treatment and (iii) the positive effects of relationships, with friends and family, and also with their physician.ConclusionsPatients must be involved in their care if they are to be able to bear their course of treatment and find ways to endure the difficult experience of cancer care. The support object represents an important therapeutic lever that can be used by their oncologists. They should be interested in their support objects, in order to support the patients in this investment and to help them to maintain it throughout the health care pathway. Furthermore, showing interest in this topic, important to the patient, could improve the physician-patient relation without using up very much of the physician’s time.

A specific method for qualitative medical research: the IPSE (Inductive Process to analyze the Structure of lived Experience) approach

“…Our results revealed the direct associations between diagnostic delay and the doctor–patient encounter [ 28 ]. The literature has already emphasized the key role of any doctor, regardless of specialty, in identify the signs, symptoms, and comorbidities of acromegaly by becoming involved and seeing the unseen ’ [ 109 ]. To identify the disease as early as possible, however, our results suggest that physicians must allow themselves to question the patient proactively and to consider clinical processes beyond their own specialty, in other words, seeing the unseen is not enough if physicians do not say the unsaid.…”

The effect and mechanism of YH0618 granule on chemotherapy- induced hair loss in patients with breast cancer: study protocol for a randomized, double-blind, multi-center clinical trial

“…Quality of life has been regarded as an important index to measure and monitor cancer patients’ treatment outcomes [21]. The Chinese version of the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Breast Cancer (FACT-B) with good reliability and validity will be used to measure breast-cancer-specific quality of life [22].…”

Effect and mechanism of YH0618 granule on chemotherapy- induced hair loss in patients with breast cancer: study protocol for a randomized, double-blind, multi-center clinical trial

“…Quality of life has been regarded as an important index to measure and monitor cancer patients' treatment outcomes [21]. Chinese version of the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Breast Cancer (FACT-B) with good reliability and validity will be used to measure breast cancer-specific quality of life [22].…”