Patient concerns at 3 and 6 months postdiagnosis

A follow-up of patient concerns as part of the “Cancer Patient Responses to Psychosocial Variables” study by McCorkle and Benoliel involved identifying what patients with lung cancer or myocardial infarction reported as concerns at 3 and 6 months postdiagnosis. Since patient concerns was operationalized as what patients chose to discuss when asked two open-ended questions in a telephone interview, the methodology was a qualitative data analysis. Data analysis consisted of reviewing subject responses to classify patient concerns into four category schemes: patient status, activities, symptoms, and attitude. Each category was judged on a 4-point Likert-type scale ranging from doing well to poorly. The findings indicated that myocardial patients were reportely doing better, engaging in more “normal activities,” having minimal symptoms, and having a “positive outlook” as compared to persons with lung cancer. However, cancer patients reported more variation in how they felt they were doing, the level and quality of their activities, the kind and number of symptoms they experienced, and the outlook they had. Overall, the pattern of concerns reported for each category by both disease groups was not significantly different from 3 to 6 months.