Conference Proceedings - School of Nursing & Midwifery - Trinity ...

School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin: 8 th Annual Interdisciplinary Research Conference
Transforming Healthcare Through Research, Education & Technology: 7 th – 9 th November 2007
Conference Proceedings
weeks, data were collected for a total of five cycles or for fifteen
weeks from patients in both groups.
Inclusion Criteria
All patients included in this study were older than sixteen years of
age. They had a diagnosis of either breast or colorectal cancer
requiring adjuvant chemotherapy. The reasons for choosing this
group of patients was that their cancer had hopefully been removed
at the time of their surgery and therefore the chemotherapy was
being given to prevent further recurrence of their disease. Their
overall long term survival was likely to be similar. They all either
required six courses of chemotherapy at three weekly intervals or
continuous chemotherapy over a twenty-four week period. They all
had normal blood full blood counts and urea and electrolytes and
were able to give written informed consent.
Exclusion Criteria
No pregnant participants were included. Patients with cerebral
metastasis were excluded, as they would be receiving palliative
rather than adjuvant chemotherapy. The visually impaired were
excluded as the study involved completing several forms which may
have proved difficult for them. Patients receiving radiotherapy to
the abdominal or pelvic region were excluded as it would indicate
advanced disease and may also have caused severe abdominal
disturbance resulting in the patient complaining of vomiting or
diarrhoea not related to chemotherapy. Patients unable to give
informed consent were excluded as it would have been unethical to
recruit them to the study.
Any patients that the health care team identified as extremely
anxious or as having a known psychiatric illness were also excluded
as these patients may have skewed the study. Different
arrangements are made for this group of patients within the
department which rendered them ineligible for this study. Patients
receiving palliative chemotherapy were excluded as their disease
progression could actually contribute to an increase in patterns of
nausea and vomiting which again would have skewed the results.
Outcome Measures
Having considered many of the tools that were rigorously tested and
found to be reliable in quality of life cancer studies, the RSCL and
the HADS were chosen for this study. These two tools represent the
most practical and reliable measures for assessing quality of life
issues for cancer patients (Slevin 1992). In a study conducted by
Hope-Stone et al (1997) these tools were used together to measure
quality of life issues in advanced colorectal cancer research patients
and were found to be easy to complete by most patients.
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