A descriptive study to assess the level of stress among women with selected type of cancer in Erode Cancer Centre at Erode

Cancer diagnosis is a significant source of psychological stress, followed by an extended period of Stressful cancer treatment modalities. Not surprisingly, patients with a diagnosis of cancer report high psychological and emotional stress

To assess the level of stress among women with selected type of cancer.

A cross – sectional descriptive design was adopted for the study.

Erode Cancer Centre, Erode Participants: 50 women fulfilling the inclusion criteria were selected by purposive sampling technique.

All participants were interviewed a questionnaire to complete; questions were related to Baseline Proforma of women and Rating scale on The Impact of Event Scale (IES) and participants were given 20 minutes to complete the questionnaire.

The findings revealed that the stress among women with breast cancer shows that, majority (70%) of the samples had severe stress, and 30% of them had moderate stress, whereas women with cervical cancer 10% were had mild stress, 30% were had moderate stress and 60% were had severe stress. It shows that breast cancer patients had more stress compared to cervical cancer patients. There was a significant association between the stress scores and variables like age and stages of cancer.

Stress is more among cancer patients. Maximum patient do not seek medical advice and adopt self-treat for themselves.