An Intervention to Increase Quality of Life and Self-Care Self-Efficacy and Decrease Symptoms in Breast Cancer Patients

This study tested effects of a nurse-administered self-efficacy intervention given on five monthly occasions and designed to enhance patients’ self-care self-efficacy. The hypotheses were that at four months and eight months after beginning chemotherapy the efficacy-enhancing experimental group would have significantly higher scores on quality of life and self-care self-efficacy than the control group and significantly less symptom distress. Fifty-six women receiving chemotherapy for breast cancer were randomized to the experimental and control groups. Outcome variables were quality of life, measured by the Functional Assessment of Cancer Treatment-Breast (FACT-B), symptom distress, measured by the Symptom Distress Scale (SDS), and factors of self-care self-efficacy, measured by Strategies Used by Patients to Promote Health (SUPPH). The interaction effects for the FACT-B ranged from small for functional concerns (eta square = .03) to large for social concerns (eta square = .110); effects for the SDS were large (eta square = .140), and for factors on the SUPPH effect sizes ranged from small (eta square = .01) for Enjoying Life and Stress Reduction to medium (eta square = .089) for Coping, and large (eta square = .141) for Making Decisions. Interventions to promote self-efficacy may increase quality of life and decrease symptom distress for women diagnosed with breast cancer.