The importance of hope in the participants' lives underscores the need to find ways to foster hope in this population. The findings also suggest that the hope experience of men may differ from the experience of women; therefore, strategies to foster hope in this population should be tailored to the male experience.

The findings underscore the importance of assessing for and fostering hope and self-efficacy as well as decreasing guilt in male spouses of women with breast cancer to improve their quality of life.