• Palliat Support Care · Dec 2018

    Dignity in cancer patients with a life expectancy of a few weeks. Implementation of the factor structure of the Patient Dignity Inventory and dignity assessment for a patient-centered clinical intervention: A cross-sectional study.

    • Andrea Bovero, Nader Alessandro Sedghi, Rossana Botto, Chiara Tosi, Valentina Ieraci, and Riccardo Torta.
    • Psycho-Oncology Unit, Department of Neuroscience,University of Turin,"Città della Salute e della Scienza" Hospital,Turin,Italy.
    • Palliat Support Care. 2018 Dec 1; 16 (6): 648-655.

    ObjectiveHospice is a favored setting for dignity care. Studies on dignity dimension in end-of-life patients are growing. The Patient Dignity Inventory (PDI) is a tool that can lead to interesting information on dignity-related aspects of suffering. The study aimed to investigate dignity among end-of-life cancer patients, by examining the Italian version of the PDI factor structure and assessing the relationship between dignity and other patients' psychosocial and spiritual variables to improve a patient-centered clinical practice.MethodThis is a cross-sectional study. Data were collected using a battery of self-administered validated rating scales. The sample included 127 hospice patients with a life expectancy of a few weeks and a Karnofsky Performance Status ≤40. Factor structure and concurrent validity of PDI and correlations between dignity and anxious and depressive symptomatology, quality of life, demoralization, personal coping styles, spiritual well-being, and spiritual daily experience were analyzed.ResultFactor analysis highlighted a five-factor solution, accounting for 60% of the overall variance. The factors were labeled Psychological Distress, Social Support, Physical Symptoms and Dependency, Existential Distress, and Loss of Purpose/Meaning. Dignity assessment evidenced that self-blame coping style, emotional and physical well-being, and depression were the loss of dignity significant predictors (R2 = 0.605; p < 0.01).Significance of resultsThe results point out the intercultural validity of the PDI and empower an accurate detection of dignity-related distress sources in the daily clinical practice. Personality traits seem to have an active role in the loss of dignity, whereas spirituality is confirmed to be positively involved in dignity enhancement.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…