Cancer Care From the Perspectives of Older Women

Abstract

To understand how older age affects cancer care, from the perspectives of older women. Qualitative, participatory. Urban southern region of Ontario, Canada. Purposive sample (age groups and income) of 15 women diagnosed with cancer at age 70 or older; 10 women were diagnosed with breast cancer, 5 with gynecologic cancer. Two face-to-face interviews, with data analysis in collaboration with the project team based on constructivist grounded theory, including negative case analysis. Age, experience of cancer care. Age-related life and health circumstances intersect with professional practice and wider social contexts and are implicated in treatment decision making, including decisions against treatment, as well as in the day-to-day "getting around" that cancer care requires. The nursing history should be holistic in scope, attending to the supportive care domains to elicit older women's physical, social, practical, informational, psychological, and spiritual needs after a diagnosis of cancer. History taking should draw forward older women's life contexts and examine these contexts in relation to cancer care, including treatment decision making. Individual-level care and systems advocacy are required to ensure that older women's worries about sustaining independence, including worries generated by inadequacies in home-based care, do not act as determinants of treatment choices.