Perceptions of Stress: Patient and Caregiver Experiences With Stressors During Hospitalization

Abstract

CANCER TREATMENT OFTEN CAUSES HIGH LEVELS OF STRESS, affecting patients' quality of life and outcomes and necessitating a holistic approach to care. Patients with cancer may also experience physiologic stress from the disease process or cancer treatment and its side effects. According to Hoffman, McCarthy, Recklitis, and Ng (2009), cancer survivors often report an increased prevalence of serious psychological distress, including patients who have been in remission for five years or longer. In addition, patients with cancer are often hospitalized because of acute conditions. In a study by Numico et al. (2015) on hospital admissions of patients with cancer, 74% of admissions were urgent and 80% were a result of uncontrolled symptoms. The top troublesome symptoms reported by patients in Numico et al.'s (2015) study were dyspnea (16%) and pain (15%). Sixty-one percent of the patients in Numico et al.'s (2015) study were discharged to home, 26% died during hospitalization, and 11% were transferred to a palliative care setting. Being in the hospital may be a stressful experience for many patients because of the unfamiliar environment, feeling a loss of control, noise, an inability to fulfill roles in the family, worries about financial issues, the fear of the unknown, and the unpredictability of their response to cancer treatment (Abuatiq, 2015).Healthcare providers are in a strategic position to identify and minimize the anticipated stressors of patients and caregivers, particularly during the hospitalization phase. Identifying appropriate interventions to minimize patient and caregiver stressors has the potential to promote effective disease management, encourage family participation in the care plan, and improve the quality of health care. Describing and understanding the stressful experiences of patients and their family caregivers can allow healthcare providers to implement stress reduction strategies that improve patients' overall satisfaction with the care that they receive during hospitalization. This study describes patients' self-reports of stress and caregivers' perceptions of the stress experienced by patients during hospitalization for cancer. Theoretical FrameworkStress is a highly subjective experience that can prompt an acute onset of physical, emotional, and mental strain, which may affect a patient's ability to heal and cope (Papathanasiou, Tsaras, Neroliatsiou, & Roupa, 2015). The concept of stress is defined as "a state of mental or emotional strain KEYWORDS

Psychometric properties of the perceived stress scale (pss‐10) with breast cancer patients

“…The emotional impact of breast cancer manifests in the form of anxiety, fear, and depression, which may persist for years after the end of treatment (Borgi et al., 2020 ; De la Torre‐Luque et al., 2020 ; Li et al., 2021 ). High levels of stress are also common among these patients (Abuatiq et al., 2020 ; Dooley et al., 2017 ; Harris et al., 2017 ; Li et al., 2021 ), and consequently, various studies have examined the impact this has on mental health (Abdollahi et al., 2019 ; Arnaboldi et al., 2017 ; Voigt et al., 2017 ).…”

Association between Quality of Life with Depressive Symptoms, Anxiety, Stress, and Emotional Distress in Peruvian Cancer Patients: A Cross-sectional Study

“…It shows a high internal consistency (α = 0.93) and evidence of internal structure [43]. Anxiety symptoms according to their scores are classi ed as normal (0-9), low anxiety (10-18), moderate anxiety (19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29), and severe anxiety (30-63) [44].…”

“…As for the psychological factor, ample evidence showed that knowing about the diagnosis of cancer is associated with an increase in depressive symptoms, anxiety, and stress [20][21][22][23]. Moreover, hospitalized patients have a higher prevalence of symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress of these health problems, compared to outpatients [16,24]. Other factors related to increased symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress in cancer patients include the high costs and economic expenses related to the treatment of the disease [20,25,26].…”

β2-adrenergic receptor signaling regulates metabolic pathways critical to myeloid-derived suppressor cell function within the TME

“…We also showed that β-AR signaling promotes tumor growth in part through enhancing MDSC accumulation and their immunosuppressive function ( Mohammadpour et al, 2019 ). This finding is especially disconcerting, given that patients with cancer frequently experience considerably higher levels of chronic stress following their diagnosis and during treatment ( Abuatiq et al, 2020 ). Since both β-AR signaling and FAO enhance MDSC suppressive function, we sought to determine whether β2-AR signaling alters the metabolic state of MDSCs and whether their immunosuppressive function is regulated through a novel β2-AR-FAO axis.…”