The effect of spirituality-based education on the meaning of life in cancer patients: a quasi-experimental study

Abstract

Introduction. Patients with cancer face challenges in finding the meaning of life. This study aimed to examine the effect of spirituality-based education on the meaning of life of cancer patients.Material and methods. This quasi-experimental study was conducted using a pretest and posttest design with two groups. The data were collected by using personal information forms and the meaning-of-life questionnaire. Patients in Iran were selected via convenience sampling and were divided into the experimental (n = 85) and control groups (n = 84) based on nonrandom allocation. The experimental group received six sessions of mobile spirituality-based education in three weeks. One month after the pretest and at the end of the spirituality-based education, the posttest was conducted. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics with SPSS software.Results. A comparison of the scores of the patients in the two groups after the intervention suggested a significant increase in the scores for the presence of meaning, search for meaning, and meaning of life for the patients in the experimental group (p = 0.001).Conclusions. The results of this study indicated that spirituality-based education can be one of the useful, effective, and applicable educational techniques to improve the meaning of life of cancer patients.