Investigation of mood state in LUNG cancer patients

This study carried out with an intervention design within the mixed approach methods in order to examine the emotional states of lung cancer patients conducted with 17 participants. For this study, criterion sampling which is a type of purposive sampling methods within qualitative sampling methods was used at the Karadeniz Technical University Health Practice and Research Center, Faculty of Medicine, Farabi Hospital, Chemotherapy Unit. Quantitative data of the study was collected with "Patient Information Form", "Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group Performance Scale", "Berkeley Emotional Expressivity Questionnaire" and "Mood Profile Scale" and qualitative data was collected with "field notes (observation, unstructured interview)", "semi-structured interview", "camera (smartphone, micro sd card)", "photographs (interpretation of photos)" and "recorder". The participants were asked to take as many photos in order to determine their emotional state, at the time and place they determined and then they were asked to choose and interpret a photograph that they thought best reflected their feelings. Quantitative and qualitative data collection tools were applied to the participants before and after the photo-taking intervention. Quantitative data were evaluated with Shapiro-Wilk, paired-sample t-test and Wilcoxon test. There was no significant difference between the Berkeley Emotional Expression Scale and Mood Profile Scale mean scores before and after the photo-taking intervention (p>0.05). Qualitative data were evaluated manually. The mood of the participants were determined as the themes of and sub-themes before the photo-taking intervention "meeting with cancer (symptoms, silent scream, first hearing of cancer, belief)" and "a new life (social support, life in hospital, treatment process, cancer metaphors, social view, life flash)" and were determined as the themes and sub-themes after the photo-taking intervention "emotion fan (perceiving symptoms, emotions), "the world through my window (bridge, frame, journey to memories, photographic metaphors, chain of immortality)" and "perspective (suffer the same cancer, mirror, future and expectations)". As a result, it was found that unstructured and semi-structured interviews with photo-taking intervention were effective in revealing the emotions of lung cancer patients.