Education and psychological support meet the supportive care needs of Taiwanese women three months after surgery for newly diagnosed breast cancer: a non-randomised quasi-experimental study.

BACKGROUND: Few studies have comprehensively examined the effectiveness of information and psychosocial support on all dimensions of cancer patients' supportive care needs.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the effects of education and psychological support on anxiety, symptom distress, social support, and unmet supportive care needs of Taiwanese women newly diagnosed with breast cancer over 3 months after surgery.

DESIGN: Two-group, non-randomised quasi-experimental design.

SETTING: The general surgical outpatient department of the largest teaching medical centre in northern Taiwan.

PARTICIPANTS: Women newly diagnosed with breast cancer (N=80) were divided into experimental (n=40) and control (n=40) groups.

METHODS: The experimental group received education and psychological support in the form of individual face-to-face and telephone follow-up sessions; the control group received routine care. Data were collected during the patients' first postoperative visit (baseline), 1 month after surgery, and 3 months after surgery.

RESULTS: After adjusting for covariates, the levels of symptom distress and unmet needs for participants in the experimental group were lower at 1 and 3 months after surgery than for those in the control group, with the results at 3 months achieving significance. However, the sexuality needs for both groups were not significantly different at 1 and 3 months. Furthermore, levels of state anxiety were significantly lower for the experimental group at 1 and 3 months than for the control group.

CONCLUSION: The education and psychological support components of our intervention programme effectively improved the unmet supportive care needs of patients newly diagnosed with breast cancer 3 months after surgery. Following prolonged treatment, women with breast cancer still have physical, psychological, and information care needs. Thus, clinical healthcare personnel should continually and actively provide culturally sensitive, individualised, and accessible information and psychological support to these patients.