Impact of Emotional Support on Serum Cortisol in Breast Cancer Patients

CONTEXT: Breast cancer is the most commonly occurring female cancer in the world. Research gap exists regarding emotional support for breast cancer patients. AIM: The main aim of this study was to compare the efficiency of Emotional Support- Focused Nurse directed Intervention on serum cortisol among arm I, II and III in breast cancer patients. METHODS: The study was designed to compare the effectiveness of emotional support focused nurse directed intervention in terms of verbal, written and telephone basis on serum cortisol among breast cancer patients in Cancer Centre at Erode. Participants were randomly allocated by using Sequentially Numbered Opaque Sealed Envelope (SNOSE) method. 2 ml of blood samples were collected from 30 breast cancer patients who were selected randomly by adopting random number table, 10 in each experimental arm during evening at 18 hour; radioimmunoassay method was used to measure the level of serum cortisol before and after intervention. The intervention was given twice in a week for the duration of 30-45 minutes, in which early 20-30 minutes spares to express thoughts and feelings of the participants and subsequent 10-15 minutes for rendering informational support and later follow up session for the period of 1 month. RESULTS: Emotional support was effective in reducing serum cortisol level among breast cancer patients. There was no statistically significant difference between arms on serum cortisol levels. CONCLUSIONS: Marginal differences were noted between posttest mean scores of serum cortisol among verbal, written and telephone arms. Further emotional support can be rendered according to the preference of the breast cancer patients.