The determination of breast cancer patients' adjustment to cancer

The diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer have negative effects on many life areas of patients and family members in the world and our country. Nurses play a major role in helping patients and family members to adjust their illness. This study was conducted as a descriptive study on 202 breast cancer patients taking health care service as inpatient at Dr. Abdurrahman Yurtaslan Ankara Oncology Research And Education Hospital to evaluate the patients? adjusment to cancer. The data were collected using The Mental Adjustment To Cancer Scale, The Brief Symptom Inventory and Individual Information Form. The tests used to evaluate the data were frequency, pearson correlation and chisquare tests. The study results show that breast cancer patients? fighting spirit (50.01) and fatalism (22.26) mean scores are over the cut off point and the most used (%49.5) adjustment style is fatalism. Also it is found when more than half of the study group (57.4%) can cope inadequately with their illness 42.6% of it can cope adequately. According to the study results when women get older anxious preoccupation decreases and fatalism increases. The study results show a significant relation between the coping styles and hospitalization number cause of breast cancer (p<0.05). The results show that the rate of individuals coping adequately and hospitalized because of breast cancer first time is more than the rate of individuals coping adequately and hospitalized because of breast cancer twice or more. A significant positive relation between inadequately coping and all psychological symptoms of the research sample is found (p<0.05, p<0.01). According to the results of the research psychological symptom mean scores of the sample are low and the highest mean score is belonged to anxiety disorder symptom. Proposals are made according to the results of the research.