Cancer-Related Anxiety: A Case Study

Patients diagnosed with cancer experience anxiety for multiple reasons and at different stages of their illness. Anxiety occurs while awaiting the actual cancer diagnosis and continues disease and the reality of death. This added stress and anxiety can affect the patient’s daily life. It is the goal of the oncology nurse to provide therapeutic interventions to improve his or her patient’s quality of life. Providing oncology patients with psychosocial interventions such as progressive relaxation techniques will help in the prevention and management of cancer-related anxiety.

DEFINTIONS
The website of the National Cancer Institute (http://www.cancer.gov) defines anxiety as “fear, dread, and uneasiness caused by stress.” The website further reports that a patient’s anxiety reaction can range from mild to extreme and interfere with a patient’s ability make decisions, maintain compliance with treatment and function on a daily basis (National Cancer Institute, 2015). A cancer diagnosis brings an array of reasons for the patient to experience stress which in turn affects their physical and psychosocial wellbeing. Stress has a physical effect on the body and can cause an elevation in the patient’s blood pressure, heart rate, and blood sugar levels. The patient’s psychosocial emotional state can also be effected and can
There were copyright issues and a fee to utilize that particular questionnaire. More recently, the American Society of Clinical Oncology have recommended a particular patient anxiety heath questionnaire to be used GAD-7 which contains seven questions that helps identify the severity of a patient’s anxiety (Anderson, et al., 2014). This GAD-7 questionnaire was the tool used to assess my patients anxiety level prior to and after the progressive muscle relaxation training