Psychoeducation and Support for Patients with Breast Cancer

Introduction
The ability to critically evaluate a quantitative design research literature is a significant skill for any practitioner in any discipline, including nursing. Critically evaluating an article enables the practitioner to rightfully judge the usefulness and integrity of the evidence as well as the conclusions made in the article. It is without a doubt that today’s healthcare has become effective as a result of evidence-based research and practice. The driving force of research based on evidence is the ability to interpret and quantify a phenomenon as well as examine the relationship among variables numerically. In the case of nursing, the research trend has been evolving from being centered on interactions among the nurses and the patients to finding evidence that would be necessary for nursing practice. Mainly, the main researches have been focused on quantitative research which involves collecting data o variable sand analyzing it. This helps in identifying the deep nature of realities, its dynamic structure as well as its systems of relations. Mostly, it helps identify the strength of correlation between variables.
Breast cancer remains the most common diagnosis for cancer among females in the global statistics for cancer. Notably, there has been an increase in long-term survival rates. The rise in early detection and improved treatment has steadily increased the number of breast cancer survivors. However, it is clear that the patients and survivors of breast cancer face a difficult set of challenges resulting from their treatment which continue to disrupt their daily functioning as well as affecting their quality of life. Fortunately, interventions such as patient education resources and psychosocial support for patients and survivors of breast cancer have increased steadily in recent years. The effectiveness of the interventions given to breast cancer patients is yet to be clarified. The most used construct in assessing the interventions is the quality of life (QOL) of the patients. There exist many research papers on the quantitative research of the interventions and support given to patients and survivors of breast cancer. The effectiveness of these research papers needs to be critically evaluated. This paper seeks to review three of such papers on Psychoeducation and Support for Patients with Breast Cancer and evaluate the strength of the evidence found in the literature.
The three articles that are reviewed in this paper involve the interventions received by breast cancer patients to make their life better. The first article “Comparing support to breast cancer patients from online communities and face-to-face support groups” seeks to compare support received by breast cancer patients from online groups and from face-to-face groups. The study was carried out in Japan where 1039 breast cancer patients were surveyed (Setoyama, Yamazaki, & Nakayama, 2011). The study involved comparing three groups, one that received support from face to face groups, another one that got help from online groups and another that received support from both face-to-face groups and the online support groups. Notably, all the support groups provided various support types from emotional to conflict solving. The research was not biased in selecting their samples. They considered the response from 1039 breast cancer patients. The respondents were to report on five characteristic related to breast cancer and treatment. The initial expectations of the patients from the support groups were also included in the survey.
The integrity of the research article can be confirmed since the group conducted a factor analysis four times separately. The researchers also performed principal axis factor extractions using Promax rotation (Setoyama, Yamazaki, & Nakayama, 2011). This research was quantitative since it determined al the variables and compared them to determine the best mode of support for breast cancer patients. The survey was conducted using questionnaires both online and postal where a pretest of 81 patients was carried out. Online communities were searched using Yahoo and Google search engines. The research results showed that the group which got the highest form of help was the one that received help from both sources of interventions. From the result of the study, the researchers concluded that the group which got the highest form of help was the one that received help from both sources of interventions. This made the researchers give a practical implication to the health providers on advising breast cancer patients to not only seek support from face to face groups but to also from online communities. The face to face support is indispensable since it includes practical support.
The second article is “Web-Based Tailored Psychoeducation for Breast Cancer Patients at the Onset of the Survivorship Phase: A Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial.” The article acknowledges that patients have psychological needs that are unmet after the completion of their treatment. The research, therefore, shows the need to have a psychoeducational intervention to support breast cancer patients after treatment completion. The article seeks to determine how effective a psychoeducational program that is web-based which seeks to inform the breast cancer patients to be in charge of their prevailing problems would be (Admiraal, 2017). It shows the importance of psychoeducation which educates patients as well as combines the education with other activities like information on self-management.
Consequently, there are positive effects on the outcomes of patients who heed to the instructions obtained from after treatment advice. The study was an effective one since it as involved during the actual time when the support for the breast cancer patients chosen as the sample was happening. The researchers used female breast cancer patients from Netherlands hospitals and whose chemotherapy had just finished. They subscribed them to the online support program that provided them with fully automated information, services for reported problems, resources and strategies on how to solve problems. The patients filled a self-report form where their control over their future was tested at the end of 6 and 12 weeks (Admiraal, 2017). The study results showed that the use of online support program increased optimism in the breast cancer patients as well as improved control over their lives. The research article has a weakness of not having a clear objective. It stated that its objective was to examine the effectiveness of the online program on breast cancer patients However, in conclusion, the research concludes that the effectiveness was not demonstrated. This makes the research paper to have less usefulness in the nursing practice. Its research results can only be used as a start point for further study in the same field and on the development and use of an online psychoeducational program for breast cancer patients. Moreover, it is not clear of the total number of patients who took part in the study.
The third article is “The effects of psychoeducation and telephone counseling on the adjustment of women with early-stage breast cancer.” The article acknowledges that though there it is well-known that treatment should include other interventions like counseling and educational, there are less evidence-based trials that have examined the effectiveness of the counseling and educational interventions (Sherman et al., 2012). The study, therefore, sought to examine the adjustment of women emotionally, physically and socially after receiving psychoeducation through telephone or videotapes. The integrity of the data is trusted since it is primary data from a trial carried out by the researchers. The effectiveness of the study was increased by having a control group that was not given access to the psychoeducation.
Unlike the other articles, the interventions in this study were administered at various stages of the recovery process before the treatment completion. The research literature is reliable since there were three types of variables, that is, physical, emotional and social variables were measured by various subscales. The results showed that though physical and social adjustments were similar for the test and control groups, the emotional adjustment increased more in the intervention groups than on the self-care group (Sherman et al., 2012). The conclusion of the research was that the self-care (control) group still gave some level of adjustment to the patients with breast cancer with or without the psychoeducational interventions. Consequently, the introduction of psychoeducational programs for breast cancer increased the psychological well-being of breast cancer patients as well as decreasing the distress and severity of side-effects. Therefore, this research article is significant in evidence-based practice in nursing. However, the research also forms a basis for further study in the same field of study.
Conclusion
The three articles have information that is each equally important to the nursing practice. Despite the weaknesses found in the literature, each of the articles can be used to enlighten a practitioner regarding the use of interventions to enhance the lives of those living with breast cancer. The first article that compares interventions from various platforms provides a practitioner with evidence-based facts on the advantages of each support group and also implies that there is a need for any breast cancer patient to receive services from both face-to-face groups and online communities. The second article may not be of much use to a practitioner since it did not meet its objective which was to determine how effective a psychoeducational program that is web-based would be. However, the use of control group showed that interventions to make better the lives of patients. Moreover, the same was emphasized in the third article that sought to examine the adjustment of women emotionally, physically and socially after receiving psychoeducation through telephone or videotapes. Though the normal self-care of a patient still gives some level of adjustment, receiving interventions enhance the lives of breast cancer patients. Most of the evidence provided in the three articles was strong and only a few of the information provided lacked integrity in the second article. Generally, all three articles form a great base for further researches in the same field of study.


References
Admiraal, J. M., van der Velden, A. W., Geerling, J. I., Burgerhof, J. G., Bouma, G., Walenkamp, A. M., ... & Reyners, A. K. (2017). Web-Based Tailored Psychoeducation for Breast Cancer Patients at the Onset of the Survivorship Phase: A Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial. Journal of pain and symptom management, 54(4), 466-475.
Setoyama, Y., Yamazaki, Y., & Nakayama, K. (2011). Comparing support to breast cancer patients from online communities and face-to-face support groups. Patient education and counseling, 85(2), e95-e100.
Sherman, D. W., Haber, J., Hoskins, C. N., Budin, W. C., Maislin, G., Shukla, S., ... & Rosedale, M. (2012). The effects of psychoeducation and telephone counseling on the adjustment of women with early-stage breast cancer. Applied Nursing Research, 25(1), 3-16.