Mental Adjustment as a Predictor of Comprehensive Quality of Life Outcome among Patients with Terminal Cancer

Li-Fang Chang, Chi-Kang Lin, Li-Fen Wu, Ching-Liang Ho, Yi-Ling Lu and Hsueh-Hsing Pan
Additional contact information
Li-Fang Chang: Department of Nursing, Tri-Service General Hospital, Taipei 11490, Taiwan
Chi-Kang Lin: Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Tri-Service General Hospital, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei 11490, Taiwan
Li-Fen Wu: Department of Nursing, Tri-Service General Hospital, Taipei 11490, Taiwan
Ching-Liang Ho: Division of Hematology and Oncology, Tri-Service General Hospital, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei 11490, Taiwan
Yi-Ling Lu: Department of Nursing, Tri-Service General Hospital, Taipei 11490, Taiwan
Hsueh-Hsing Pan: Department of Nursing, Tri-Service General Hospital, Taipei 11490, Taiwan

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 9, 1-11

Abstract: Using path modeling, this study aimed to explore whether mental adjustment was directly or indirectly related to comprehensive quality of life outcome (CoQoLO) among patients with terminal cancer. We conducted a cross-sectional designed study among patients with terminal cancer who underwent convenience sampling at our northern Taiwan clinic from August 2019 to August 2020. Patient characteristics data were collected via structured questionnaires, namely, the Mini-Mental Adjustment to Cancer Scale and the Comprehensive Quality of Life Outcome Inventory. Descriptive statistics and regression analyses were used to examine the relationship between mental adjustment and CoQoLO. Path analysis described the dependencies among variables. For the 117 enrolled patients analyzed, MAC (? = 1.2, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.8–1.6, p < 0.001) and living with others (? = 19.9, 95% CI = 4.1–35.7, p = 0.015) were significant predictors and correlated positively with a CoQoLO score. Path modeling showed that the patients’ mental adjustment, economic status, perceived disease severity, palliative prognostic index, and symptom severity directly affected their CoQoLO. Our results indicate that the higher the mental adjustment, the better the CoQoLO among patients with terminal cancer. Thus, nurses need to assess mental adjustment levels when patients are hospitalized and accordingly develop interventions to improve the terminally ill patients’ mental adjustment to the final stages of cancer, thereby helping them to achieve good CoQoLO.

Keywords: mental adjustment; psychological adjustment; emotional adjustment; mental adaptation; psychological adaptation; emotional adaptation; comprehensive quality of life outcome; cancer patient; terminally ill patient; path modeling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/9/4926/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/9/4926/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:9:p:4926-:d:549234

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().