Abstract
Insomnia is one of the most frequent symptoms and usually generates significant stress in 60% of patients with advanced cancer. Worries from the patients’ and relatives’ perspective are crucial to improve the patients’ quality of life but have received limited attention. The aims were to identify the concerns of patients with insomnia in the terminal illness stage in a palliative care unit and the relatives’ perception, and to compare both. Here, 63 patients and 53 relatives answered a questionnaire about worries in the personal, spiritual, family-related and economic area, as well as a quality-of-life uniscale. The results showed that the relatives’ most frequent concern was “Having lived life to the fullest” (100%), and the most intense was “The possible suffering during the process” (9.2/10). The patients’ most expressed concern was: “Having unfinished business” (100%), and the most intense was “Suffering during the process” (9.3/10). Quality of life showed an average value of 6.95 out of 10. Relatives only coincided significantly in: “Not knowing what happens after death” (r = 0.600; p = 0.000). These results bring visibility to concerns during the final stage of oncological palliative patients with insomnia from the patients’ and relatives’ perspective. Knowing both is useful for professionals to foster the well-being for a short, yet very important, period for patients, relatives and the caregiving team.
Highlights
Oncological patients in advanced stages face a progressive incurable disease with limited response to treatments, and often seem to present severe and changing symptoms during the final stage of life
It was observed that insomnia, one of the most frequent symptoms [5], increases before death [6] and affects about at least one of three palliative care patients [7], and it usually generates significant stress in 40–60% of patients with advanced cancer [5,8]
The majority came from home (79.4%) and the most prevalent location of tumours were the lungs (22.2%), urinary bladder (15.9%), and colon (14.3%)
Summary
Oncological patients in advanced stages face a progressive incurable disease with limited response to treatments, and often seem to present severe and changing symptoms during the final stage of life. It was observed that insomnia, one of the most frequent symptoms [5], increases before death [6] and affects about at least one of three palliative care patients [7], and it usually generates significant stress in 40–60% of patients with advanced cancer [5,8]. It has received a limited amount of attention [7], bearing in mind that it contributes doubly to the patient’s discomfort.
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