This study was designed to test the correlation between spiritual well-being and quality of life and to identify this variable on quality of life. The subjects were 70 cancer patients of select hospitals in Seoul. Ellison(1983)'s spiritual well-being scale, Padilla's quality of life scale were used after some modification. The results & conclusions are as follows : 1. The score on the spiritual well-being scale ranged from 47 to 120 with a mean of 81.40(SD : 13.98). 2. The score on the quality of life scale ranged from 72 to 166 with a mean of 119.67(SD : 21.71). 3. In the relationship between social-demographic & spiritual well-being were significant difference in religion, the degree of faith & education. 4. There were significant correlations between spiritual well-being and quality of life. (gamma=.584, P<.001) 5. Existential spiritual well-being had significant effect on quality of life.(37%) In conclusion, the results propose the processes from spiritual well-being to quality of Life through religion. Spiritual well-being intervention programs are needed to improve the quality of life in cancer patients.
Education ; Humans ; Quality of Life* ; Seoul

The purpose of this study is to explore and describe the lived experience of leukemia patients by eliciting their verbal description of the experience. Participants were persons who were diagnosed with leukemia at the hospital and living at home after treatment. Data were obtained from interview of five leukemia patients and experience journals of 10 leukemia patients. Interview were tape recorded and transcribe verbation. The transcripts were analyzed by Colaizzi method. Major theme clusters that were emerged from the analysis are "Urgency or Impendence", "Terribleness or Miserableness", "Uncertainty", "Searching for hope" and "Spiritual well-being". The results of this study may help nurse to implement more efficient nursing strategies for leukemia patients by deeply understanding their lived experience and to develop quality of life program for leukemia patients.
Humans ; Leukemia* ; Nursing ; Quality of Life

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to suggest the projected manpower of hospice and palliative care nurses & APNs(advanced practice nurses)needed in the future. METHOD: Need model, ratio model and expert opinion were used for projecting the number of hospice and palliative care nurses & APNs. RESULT: 1. The number of Korean hospice facilities was 64 in 2002. The number of hospice nurses in 2001 was 194 and that of beds was 407. 2. The number of hospice target patients was estimated at a minimum of 16,415 to a maximum of 25,254 in 2002, 12,366 to 26,389 in 2005, and 14,057 to 30,000 in 2020. 3. The number of hospice and palliative nurses needed to meet the demands in 2002, 2005 and 2020 was estimated at a minimum of 1,136 to maximum of 1,748, 1,187 to 1,826, and 1,349 to 2,076, respectively. 4. The number of hospice & palliative care APNs needed to meet the demands in 2002, 2005 and 2020 was estimated at 232, 242, and 274, respectively. CONCLUSION: The legalization of hospice is expected to increase demands for hospice nurses and advanced practice hospice and palliative care nurses in the future.
Expert Testimony ; Hospices* ; Humans ; Korea* ; Palliative Care*

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a spirituality/hope promoting program on fighting spirit, helplessness, anxiety, and self-care behaviors. METHODS: A nonequivalent control group pretest- posttest design was used. Study subjects were 22 cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy for the experimental group and 31 for the control group. The experimental group received a 4-week intervention, 30-50 minutes a day weekly. Variables were measured at baseline, 4 and 8 weeks later. Fighting spirit and helplessness were measured by MAC(Mental Adjustment to Cancer) and anxiety was measured by Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale. Self-care behaviors scale developed by Oh et al.,(1997) was used. RESULTS: The experimental group revealed significantly more fighting spirit(t=-4.10, p=.000). more self-care behaviors(t=-5.91, p=.000). and less helplessness(t=3.94, p=.000). No difference, however, was found in anxiety between the two groups(t=.24, p=.861). CONCLUSION: These results suggested positive effects of a spirituality/hope intervention program. Helplessness decreased mainly through an increase in fighting spirit. Self-care behaviors increased mainly through an decrease in helplessness and increase in fighting spirit.
Anxiety ; Depression ; Humans ; Self Care ; Spirituality

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to develop a Web-based flash content for fighting spirit promotion and to test its effect on cancer patients' fighting spirit. METHODS: The 15-minute long Web-based flash content was developed using the following 5 process: analysis, planning, development, program operation and evaluation stages and utilized the multiple edition and revision processes from December 2005 to August 2006. The evaluation was done by one group pretest-posttest design. Study subjects were 17 cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. The group were received a 2-week intervention, a day weekly, and measured the variables at baseline, 4 weeks later. The study was performed from August 2006 to February 2007 at a cancer center in Korea. Fighting spirit was measured by Mini-MAC(Mental Adjustment to Cancer). Data was analysed by descriptive statistics and paired t-test using SAS 9.13 program. RESULTS: On the Web-based flash content, there are 4 menu bars that consisted of cancer diagnosis, symptom management, stress management, and cancer survivorship. The study group revealed significantly more fighting spirit than pre-test(t=-3.04, p=.008). CONCLUSION: This Web-based flash content can be utilized in psychosocial interventions for promoting fighting spirit in patients with cancer.
Humans ; Korea ; Phenothiazines ; Social Planning ; Survival Rate ; Surveys and Questionnaires

PURPOSE: This study explored and described the living spiritual experience and was attempted to gain an understanding of spirituality. This was done by eliciting participants' verbal descriptions of their experiences. METHOD: Data was obtained from in-depth interviews with one cancer patient, one pastor, and three missionaries after obtaining informed consent from each. Interviews were tape recorded and transcribed verbatim. The transcripts were analyzed using Colaizzi's phenomenological method. Sandelowski's evaluation criteria for qualitative research, such as reliability, suitability and auditability, were also used to establish reliability and validity of this study. RESULT: The five major theme clusters that designated the essence of the spiritual experience, "spiritual awareness," "interconnectedness," "love," "transcendent energy," "purpose and meaning in life," emerged from the analysis. CONCLUSION: This study revealed that spirituality was activated by awareness through introspection and interconnectedness with a Supreme Being. The interconnectedness with a Supreme Being played an important role in harmonious relationships with others and self. It also resulted in revealing the other beneticial attributes of spirituality. Love, the core concept of the interconnectedness, worked as a transcendent energy. Also, the ability to see beyond reality and resulted in finding meaning in life and accomplishing well being.
Humans ; Informed Consent ; Love ; Missions and Missionaries ; Qualitative Research ; Reproducibility of Results ; Spirituality*

PURPOSE: This study was done to identify predictors of the fighting spirit or helplessness/hopelessness in the patients' mental adjustment to cancer. Cancer patients' characteristics like performance status, metastasis and duration of diagnosis with demographic factors, spiritual support and social support were used as predictors of a fighting spirit or helplessness/hopelessness. METHODS: A total of 124 ambulatory cancer patients completed the Mental Adjustment to Cancer (MAC) scale and responded in a structured instrument about their characteristics, spiritual and social support. RESULTS: The results of multiple regression analysis revealed that confidence in the supporter (R2=.114, p=.000), duration of cancer diagnosis (R2=.041, p=.000) and faith (R2=.030, p=.000) were predictive of a fighting spirit (R2=.185, p=.000); whereas, education (R2=.074, p=.001), performance status (R2=.055, p=.000), satisfaction with social support (R2=.046, p=.000), and metastasis (R2=.037, p=.000) were predictive of helplessness/hopelessness (R2=.202, p=.000). CONCLUSION: Social support, spiritual support and disease related factors like metastasis, performance status, and duration of cancer diagnosis need to be considered in a psychosocial nursing intervention for a fighting spirit or helplessness/hopelessness.
*Adaptation, Psychological ; Adult ; Aged ; Emotions ; Female ; Humans ; Interviews as Topic ; Male ; Mental Health ; Middle Aged ; Neoplasm Staging ; Neoplasms/*psychology ; Predictive Value of Tests ; Quality of Life ; Questionnaires ; Social Support

This study will test one's spiritual well-being which can be an effective hope factor, and, if so found, suggests the importance of such factors in healing cancer. From this research, a total of 97 samples were used, either hospitalized in or outpatients of the general hospitals in Seoul. The hope scale proposed by Paloutzion and Ellison(1982) and Nowotny's Hope Scale(1989) was used. Data was collected from February to April 1998 to be processed by the SAS statistical package. The study has resulted as follows: 1. The average score and the standard deviation of the overall spiritual well-being recorded 82.36 +/- 15.93, with religious and existential sectors being 40.81 +/- 10.27 and 41.55 +/- 7.72, respectively. 2. The spiritual well-being scores differed significantly according to the sample's level of education, religion, belief, the length of period of religious practices, and the frequency of participation in the religious meeting. 3. THe hope score of the sampled cancer patients showed an average of 82.94 with the standard deviation of 10.27. 4. The demographic characteristics were found to have resulted in a significant difference in the hope scores in such areas as religion and strength of the faith. 5. The hypothesis was supported that the spiritual well-being has a positive effect on the patient's hope (r=.632, p=.0001). 6. A multiple regression analysis indicated that the existential well-being(50%), age(5%), and the religious well-being(2%) significantly explained the hope scores. Viewing that religion and faith contributed significantly to a patient's spiritual well-being and hope, nurses should better regard and furthermore encourage the religious life of the cancer patient. Also suggested is that spiritual caring proven very effective by this study be applied actively in enhancing the hope for the cancer patients.
Education ; Hope* ; Hospitals, General ; Humans ; Outpatients ; Seoul

PURPOSE: This study was conducted to 1) find out the characteristic of smoke related characteristics of nurses. 2) find out the frequency of Smoking cessation intervention delivered by nurses. 3) compare the differences in mean scores of smoking cessation interventions by general characteristics. METHOD: The survey questionnaire was mailed out to nurses who were working at the randomly selected hospitals throughout the country from November 28, 2003 to February 15, 2004. RESULT: 0.6% of nurses were current smokers 40.7% of nurses have attended smoking cessation education. Nurses who were older, had masters degree, had oncology experience, higher position, participated in smoking cessation education, and had smoking related disease among family members were variables related to higher frequencies in delivering tobacco interventions. CONCLUSION: Although nurses are in an important position in delivering tobacco interventions and provide resources, their participation in consistent delivery of an intervention is less than desirable. To help nurses to participate in the assessment of tobacco use and interventions for cessation, the development of educational program is necessary.
*Smoking Cessation/statistics & numerical data ; Smoking/epidemiology ; Nurses/*statistics & numerical data ; Humans ; Health Promotion ; Female ; Data Collection ; Adult

PURPOSE: This study was conducted to 1) find out the characteristic of smoke related characteristics of nurses. 2) find out the frequency of Smoking cessation intervention delivered by nurses. 3) compare the differences in mean scores of smoking cessation interventions by general characteristics. METHOD: The survey questionnaire was mailed out to nurses who were working at the randomly selected hospitals throughout the country from November 28, 2003 to February 15, 2004. RESULT: 0.6% of nurses were current smokers 40.7% of nurses have attended smoking cessation education. Nurses who were older, had masters degree, had oncology experience, higher position, participated in smoking cessation education, and had smoking related disease among family members were variables related to higher frequencies in delivering tobacco interventions. CONCLUSION: Although nurses are in an important position in delivering tobacco interventions and provide resources, their participation in consistent delivery of an intervention is less than desirable. To help nurses to participate in the assessment of tobacco use and interventions for cessation, the development of educational program is necessary.
*Smoking Cessation/statistics & numerical data ; Smoking/epidemiology ; Nurses/*statistics & numerical data ; Humans ; Health Promotion ; Female ; Data Collection ; Adult