‘Informative and Emotional Needs of Cancer Patients during COVID-19 Pandemic: A Proposal for a Concomitant Psychological Support during Inpatient Chemotherapy Delivery’ Brief Review
This article has undoubtedly been the most relevant of all I’ve reviewed so far. The application of COVID-19 as a stress test of sorts creates a normally untestable scenario. It would, normally, in no world be moral to subject cancer patients to greater stress than necessary, but being that COVID-19 did so, to have results from such an experience analyzed is of great value to my research.
The expressed differences in the roles of age, social class, and educational level are all characteristics of great concern to my review, likely equalling at least two of the ~five I plan to study across various papers. The analysis of surveying patients pre- and post-COVID-19 were extremely valuable testing periods, as seen with Rows 1, 2, 4, 10, 13, 14, 20, and 21, in particular.
Firstly, the category of ‘needing more information about _’ is an extremely understandable belief. It is entirely plausible to deduce that in times of uncertainty, people look for greater certainty in other areas of their lives to compensate. The most interesting differences, to me, are in Rows 1 (58% to 35%), 2 (58% to 41%), and 10 (50% to 28%). Row 1 is focused on current conditions, 2 on future, and 10 on economic information. All three are of interest to me, but Row 10 will likely be the data point most comparable over multiple studies.
Secondly, the category of ‘needing emotional support from _’ is just as understandable. COVID-19 being an emotionally strenuous period likely imparted some larger amount of emotional dependence. Some results, however, are less straightforward than the previously discussed ‘information-based’ category. Row 14, in specific, seems a bit complex, being that T1 and T2 were fairly similar, but it was T3 (return of restrictive measures) that seemed to spur the spike in family-based dependence. Rows 13 and 20 have more reasonable conclusions, with 13 displaying a need to speak with others in similar conditions at a decreasing rate as time passed, and 20 displaying a feeling of welcome-ness that increased over time, likely spawning from the chaos found in hospitals during the early periods of COVID-19.
Furthermore, from this study comes a plethora of references I will probably review. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cancer deaths due to delays in diagnosis in England, Symptom cluster of emotional distress, fatigue and cognitive difficulties among younger and older brest cancer survivors: the mediating role of subjective stress, and Cancer patients attending treatment during COVID-19: intolerance of uncertainty and psychological distress, among a few others, will absolutely be papers that I read and review at some point.
