The purpose of this study was to describe the degree of psychological distress, gender role attitude, housework sharing and quality of life in gynecologic cancer survivors. The impacts of psychological distress, gender role attitude, and housework sharing on quality of life were also investigated.
One-hundred sixty two subjects who were diagnosed gynecologic cancers more than two years ago were recruited at a general hospital in B city from June 15 to September 20 in 2017. They were asked to complete a questionnaire, which were consisted of 4 measurements; FACT-G (ver. 4) for quality of life, anxiety and depression from SCL-90-R for psychological distress, gender role attitude and housework sharing. 158 data sets were used in final analysis. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, independent t-test, ANOVA, Pearson''s correlation coefficient, and multiple regression analysis using SPSS 21.0 program.
The results of the study were as follows; Quality of life were significantly different according to age (F=4.706, p=.010), education level (F=7.054, p=.001), marital status (t=-2.392, p=.018), family income (F=5.678, p=.004), diagnosis (F= 3.747, p=.012), number of treatment method (F=8.259, p<.001), and cancer stage at diagnosis (F=2.714, p=.047). Quality of life was significantly negatively correlated with psychological distress (r=-.638, p<.001) but not with gender role attitude (r=-.139, p=.820) and housework sharing (r=.075, p=.350). Psychological distress was significantly positively correlated with gender role attitude (r=.245, p<.01). The factors which impacted quality of life significantly were diagnosis (t=2.269, p=.025), number of treatment methods (t=2.581, p=.011) education level (t=3.328, p<.001), and psychological distress (t=-9.964, p<.001).
This study found that psychological distress was key determinant of quality of life in gynecologic cancer survivors. Nursing interventions which relieve psychological distress need to be developed for them. Nurses need to put priority on ovarian cancer survivors who were low educated and applied multiple treatment methods when performing nursing interventions to improve the quality of life of gynecologic cancer survivors.