The influence of patients' education on quality of life: A single center experience

Abstract

Background: Since 1998 an individual approach in patient's education has been applied at the Institute for Oncology and radiology of Serbia (IORS). Until now about 2500 patients have been informed and advised about the disease they were suffering from. Furthermore, education of patients and their family members is also ongoing at the IORS within European Education Program (EEP) "Learning to live with cancer". This program is based on popular lectures requiring multidisciplinary team consisting of physician, senior nurse, psychologist, nutritionist, defectologist, and social worker. At the IORS, more than 3000 patients were included in this work in groups within EEP. The aim of this research was to evaluate the influence of patients' education on quality of life (QoL). Patients and methods: A hundred and five individuals were divided into three groups of study subjects: experimental cancer patients group (n=35), control cancer patients group (n=35) (who did not have organized education), and control healthy persons group (n=35). All three groups were matched regarding gender, age and education level. The Rotterdam Symptom Checklist was used for the assessment of QoL. Results: We found high correlation between the level of getting informed and total quality of life (r=0.330), physical dimension of quality of life (r=0.233) and poor correlation with psychic dimension of quality of life (r=0.215). All measures of QoL were significantly better in experimental patients' group than in control patients' group: physical dimensions (p<0.01), psychic dimension (p<0.01), functional ability (p<0.01), and total QoL p<0.01). Conclusion: Education significantly improves the quality of life in cancer patients. It seems to be a powerful weapon against the disease, and should be incorporated as an integral part of treatment plan.