Factors Influencing on Resilience of Elderly Gastric Cancer Patients

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to review the resilience of elderly patients of gastric cancer, their self-efficacy, family support, spiritual well-being and depression. Methods: The subjects were 100 patients who were 65 years old or older who had been admitted to the surgical department at K University Hospital in B City. Data were collected from August 10 to September 2, 2016. Results: Resilience of patients showed significant correlations with the degree of self-efficacy r=.51 (p<.001), the degree of family support r=.47 (p<.001), the degree of spiritual well-being r=.59 (p<.001), the degree of depression r=.34 (p<.001). The factor that affected resilience most was spiritual well-being (β=.35), followed by self-efficacy (β=.21), monthly average income (β=.20), family support (β=.18), and experienced symptoms (β=.15). The overall explanatory power was 47.4%. Conclusion: The degree of resilience in elderly patients of gastric cancer was higher when self-efficacy, family support and spiritual well-being were higher. To improve the resilience of elderly patients of gastric cancer, the development and application of a nursing intervention program that take these variables into account is needed. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.