The Relationship among Percieved Social Support, Hope and Quality of Life of Cancer Patients

암환자가 지각한 사회적지지, 희망과 삶의 질과의 관계

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among percieved social support, hope and quality of life of the cancer patients and to gain the baseline data for development of nursing intervention program for promoting quality of life in cancer patients. The design of this study was a cross sectional correlational survey. The subjects were 220 out and in-cancer patients in 5 general hospitals in Pusan. The data were collected from July 2 to August 1, 2001. The instruments were the Percieved social support scale(16 items, 5 point scale) had developed by Tae(1986), Hope scale(12 items, 4point scale) developed by Nowotny(1989) and Quality of life scale(31 items, 10 point scale) developed by Tae et al.(2000). The data was analyzed by the SPSS/PC+ program using frequency & percentage, item mean & standard deviation, t-test, ANOVA & Scheffe test, Pearson's correlation coefficient. The results of this study was as follows: 1) The item mean score of quality of life was $6.05{\pm}1.16$ (range 0-10). The highest score of subarea of the quality of life was the spiritual wellbeing area ($7.09{\pm}1.63$) and the lowest score was social wellbeing area ($5.53{\pm}1.65$). The mean score of perceived social support was $52.65{\pm}10.32$ (최저 1, 최고 80). The mean score of family support was $32.71{\pm}6.66$ (range 1-40) and the mean score of medical team support was $19.93{\pm}5.95$ (range 1-40). The mean score of Hope was $37.02{\pm}5.64$ (range 1-48). 2) There were statistically significant difference in the score of quality of life according to the life effect of religion(F=3.97, p=0.00), treatment method(F=2.94, p=0.01), area of diagnosis(F= 3.48, p=0.01), stage of disease (F=13.74, p=0.00). 3) There was significant correlation between perceived social support(r=0.44, p=0.000 ; family support ; r=0.334, p=0.000, medical support; r=0.395, p=0.000), hope(r=0.563, p=0.000) and quality of life. In conclusion, there was a significant relationship among perceived social support, hope and quality of life. Therefore perceived social support, hope intervention programs should be developed to improve the quality of life in cancer patients.