Influência da espiritualidade, religiosidade e crenças pessoais na qualidade de vida de pacientes em quimioterapia

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to evaluate how spirituality, religiosity and personal beliefs work on the quality of life with patients being treated with chemotherapy. It´s a transversal, qualitative and quantitative, study made with 101 participants who received chemotherapy treatment, on a hospital in a city in the interior of São Paulo. The participants had to go through three kinds of assessment: a questionarie with closed and opened ended questions with data related to a sociodemographic and clinical profile and, in addition, the Questionaries WHOQOL-Bref and WHOQOLSRPB Spirituality, Religiosity and Personal Beliefs Module. To analyse the statistic data, The covariance analysis was used as well as the Tukey test. The content of what they said was analyed according to the Method of Interpretation of Senses. The results showed the predominance of women, age 30-60 years old, low level of education, professionally active. About 95% were assisted by the national system of health in Brazil- SUS. There was the prevalence of breast cancer followed by colon and rectal cancer. Considering that 42% presented metastasis, the palliative and adjuvant chemotherapy were used in 40,59% in both cases as for demographic and clinical variables in relation to the dominions of WHOQOL-Bref, there was a bigger prevalence on the social domain and a smaller prevalence for the physical domain. Men presented the highest scores in all domains in comparison to women. The result of WHOQOL-SRPB has not shown a meaningful difference on the variables: “ Connection of being” or “ Spiritual Strength and Faith”. However on the qualiative part of the study on what two categories were found: “Getting to Know my Diagnostic” and “Facing the disease”, the results demonstrated another sense concerning spirituality and religiosity in which was possible to observe that, the main discourse was the faith in God, which allow them the strength to face the diase. The results of the current study have shown the importance of considering the magnitude of the spiritual dimension for the oncology patient, somehow benefits them during the period of sickness and convalescence.