Cancer-behavior-coping in women with breast cancer: Effect of a cancer self-management program

OBJECTIVE: The Cancer Behavior Inventory (CBI), a measure of self-efficacy for coping with cancer, was used to examine the feasibility and impact of a self-management program for women with breast cancer. This controlled clinical trial was conducted on newly diagnosed breast cancer patients, using a time series, block design. Sixty-nine patients were allocated to receive four weekly sessions of the self-management training program, while 78 patients were allocated to the control (usual-care) group.

RESULTS: A significant difference was found between the means of the experimental and the control group at post-test (T2; P=.01) and at follow-up (T3; P=.02). The multivariate analyses of the three repeated measures showed significant differences (P=.001; partial eta-squared = 0.092). Pair-wise comparison shows that the differences were significant between baseline (T1) measure and follow-up (T3) measure (P=.01), and between post-test (T2) and follow-up (T3) (P=.03).

CONCLUSION: For women undergoing intervention, the cancer-specific self-efficacy as measured by the cancer-behavior-coping inventory showed improvement over time. The result demonstrated that the self-management program to improve self-care correlates significantly with coping behavior in cancer. A larger and longer study of this efficacy-enhancing intervention is warranted.