初診斷乳癌婦女其壓力感受

In Taiwan, the incidence rate of breast cancer steadily increases, and the statistics also show that the onset age gets younger and younger. Both trends of incidence and onset age result in a serious impact on the health and life of middle-aged women. The purpose of this study was to explore the women's perception of stress, who were newly diagnosed as breast cancer. The subjects of this study were from a surgical ward of a medical center. Through in-depth interviews, 20 women were recriuted and interviewed. The results sugest that four themes including uncontrollable, overloaded, facing the challenges and unpredictable were extracted from the data collected. The research findings showed that the newly diagnosed breast cancer women perceive uncontrollable, these women may improve their abilities in making decisions when professional guidance and assistance were provided. When they perceive overloaded, supports from friends and families are important factors in helping these women go through the overloaded stress. When the women perceive facing the challenges, it indeed takes time to reconstruct the women's mental health and recognition to allow them to make a decision. Besides, when the women perceive unpredictable, they can further face their new life flexibly when they accept of themselves and the disease. The cancer itself grants different meaning to the life of these women. They may still be able to construct a meaningful life even they might be staging into the unpredictable future. This study suggested that the newly diagnosed breast cancer women should seek help from a medical care team to deal with the stress through appropriate care plans and interventions provided by doctors, nurses, psychologists, social workers and religionists. In the future, the researchers may develop a stress scale for breast cancer women, to help the clinicians quickly assess the patients' stress to improve the care efficiency and quality of breast cancer patients.