Investigating stress coping strategies in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy

Cancer patients often face uncontrollable stress, and their efforts to control their stress are very challenging. The present study aimed to investigate stress coping strategies in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.

The statistical community of this cross-sectional study with an analytical approach study consisted of all cancer patients referred to the chemotherapy unit of Gorgan 5th Azar Educational and Medical Center during 2018-19. Amongst them, 96 patients were selected randomly. The research instrument included a demographic checklist and Stress Coping Strategy Questionnaire (Endler and Parker). The collected data were entered into SPSS software (v. 16) and analyzed using descriptive and analytical statistical tests.

In this study, breast cancer was the most common cancer among the participants (051%). Based on the scores, the task-oriented coping strategy, the avoidance-oriented coping strategy, and the emotion-oriented coping strategy received high to low scores, respectively. The relationship between the duration of cancer and the emotion-oriented (P=0.026) and the avoidance-oriented strategies (P=0.006) was significant. The relationship between the type of cancer with an emotion-oriented coping style was significant (P= 0.037).

Based on the findings, the relationship between the duration of cancer and emotion-oriented and avoidance-oriented strategies was significant. So, the lowest scores in both strategies were related to the duration longer than three years.