THE EFFECT OF GROUP COUNSELING TO ENHANCE COPING BEHAVIORS OF BREAST CANCER PATIENT RECEIVING CHEMOTHERAPY IN MAHAVAJIRALONGKORNTHUNYABURI HOSPITAL

Abstract

This study aimed to 1) compare the coping behaviors of breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy before and after group counseling and 2) compare the coping behaviors of breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy of the experimental group who received groups counseling with the control group who received traditional counseling.

            The samples were 16 breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy who had coping behavior scores less than 50 percentile. Then, simple sampling was done to divide them into 2 groups, the experimental group and the control group, 8 patients in each group. Research instruments were the group counseling program for enhancing coping behaviors and the assessment scale of the breast Cancer patients receiving chemotherapy with a reliability of .85. The experimental group received 8 sessions of the group counseling, 90–120 minute in each session. The control group received the traditional counseling. Median, quartile deviation, Wilcoxon Matched Pairs Singed-Ranks Test and Mann-Whitney U Test were used for data analyses.

The results showed that 1) after receiving the group counseling, the breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy had coping behavior scores higher than before receiving the group counseling with statistical significance at the level of .01, and 2) the breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy of the experimental group had coping behavior scores higher than those of the control group with statistical significance at the .01 level.