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
complementary therapies. However, as Burke and Sikora (1992)
and Richards (2006) suggest, the many and varied therapies need
to be integrated into conventional care in an organised way, and
chosen by and for patients depending on their acceptability and
therapeutic value. To achieve this, comprehensive evidence about
the effect and applications of complementary and alternative
medicine (CAM) within cancer care is required. This can only be
achieved by conducting research studies to evaluate specific
therapies and assess their efficacy within a variety of clinical
conditions. However, CAMs are not readily available in most NHS
cancer centres and until the development of integrated models of
health care that include CAMs is achieved, most patients who are
interested in using any complementary therapy will probably have
to continue to fund them themselves.
Summary
Findings from the study have demonstrated that the use of DDCs
and QOL tools to collect information from patients receiving
chemotherapy can be useful. Many patients did not complete the
DDCs as requested by the research team therefore some of the data
recorded could bias the results. The patterns of nausea and
vomiting recorded varied between each chemotherapy group and
over time between the intervention and the control groups.
Increased levels of anxiety were not found in the intervention group
compared with the control group, but the incidence of nausea and
vomiting was higher in the intervention group. The DDCs may have
induced a conditioned response in some patients which may account
for the higher levels of nausea and vomiting experienced by
patients in the intervention group.
Fatigue, indigestion and alterations in taste and smell were found to
be distressing to some patients. Several patients developed an
aversion to foods which reminded them of their chemotherapy
treatment. Many patients used complementary therapies to help
them cope with chemotherapy and to combat symptoms such as
nausea and vomiting. Some patients found it difficult to cope with
body image issues and would have liked the opportunity to discuss
this with the health care team. Patients’ information needs varied
and some used denial as a coping strategy.
5 Conclusions, Limitations and Recommendations of the
study
Limitations of the study
The recruitment of patients into the study was difficult as most of
the patients undergoing adjuvant chemotherapy, particularly
patients with colorectal cancer, in the cancer unit were involved in
other national drug trials. Therefore, the nursing research team
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