The most common form of female cancer in Sweden is breast cancer and the primary choice of treatment is surgery. Removing a woman's breasts is not just removing a body part but is also strongly linked to the emotional life. This has psychosocial consequences and the reactions will be different depending on how people perceive health and illness. Factors that matter are both personal experiences and cultural factors such as religion, family, and the own standards and values. It is important that a nurse is aware of cultural factors that may influence the perception of care. The aim of this study was to describe whether, and if so how, the health-related psychosocial situation after breast cancer differ between women of different cultural backgrounds. An additional aim was to discuss what the nurse should focus on during and after breast cancer treatment with respect to these differences. The method was a literature study of 12 scientific articles that were analyzed and put together in different themes. The results show that psychological stress is not rare after breast cancer treatment and various factors that influenced this proved to be altered appearance, decreased intimacy, inadequate social support and sense of hopelessness. Women from western countries stated that the altered appearance gave the greatest psychological stress while women from eastern countries had depressive symptoms as a result of inadequate social support and deficiencies in close relationships. The conclusion was that there are both many similarities and many differences among different cultures in terms of the psychosocial situation after breast cancer treatment. To provide an adequate patient care a nurse should have knowledge about these cultural differences, but still treat each patient as an individual and not as a representative of a specific culture.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-200769 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Nilsson, Helén, Nyåkers, Erika |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för folkhälso- och vårdvetenskap, Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för folkhälso- och vårdvetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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