The relationship between psychological distress and the nursing humanistic care demands in postoperative cancer inpatients: A cross-sectional study

Abstract

Abstract Background Psychological distress is receiving increasing clinical attention among cancer patients suffering from symptomatic distress. Humanistic care can improve patients' unpleasant psychological state, and identifying patient-centered reported nursing humanistic care demands is the basis for implementing humanistic care measures. However, there is no clinical research on the relationship between psychological distress and nursing humanistic care demands in cancer surgery patients. Abstract We aimed to investigate cancer patients' experiences of psychological distress after surgery and the factors that influence it, and to analyse the relationship between this and the nursing humanistic care demands. Methods This study used a convenience sampling method to survey 432 cancer patients undergoing surgical treatment in the specialized cancer hospital in Beijing. The survey used socio-demographic information, the Distress Management Screening Measures, and the Nursing Humanistic Care Demands questionnaire. Questionnaire Star was used to collect data online. SPSS24.0 software was used to test the relationship between psychological distress and nursing humanistic care demands. Results The mean scores for psychological distress and nursing humanistic care demands were 3.95 ± 2.71 and 147.02 ± 19.88, respectively, and showed a moderately positive correlation. The main issues that caused psychological distress in patients were: worry, financial problems, surroundings, nervousness, sleep, and pain. Regression analysis showed that gender, financial burden, personality type, and need for humanistic care in nursing explained 24.5% of the total variance in the model and were independent predictors of psychological distress. Conclusion Cancer inpatients have significant psychological distress after surgery and exhibit high levels of nursing humanistic care demands. Nursing humanistic care demands positively predicted psychological distress. Nursing staff should pay attention to the psychological suffering of patients and develop individualized care measures to alleviate their psychological suffering by accurately identifying their nursing humanistic care demands.