View article

To identify and analyze patterns of meaning-making and spirituality in cancer patients.

The study sample consisted of 20 patients with an average age of 60 years, who had received radiotherapy for cancer of various sites at a public oncology hospital in Athens. The data collection was based on semi-structured interviews, and thematic analysis was the method used to analyze the qualitative research data.

From the thematic analysis of the interview data, 4 major themes and 12 individual subthemes emerged. The first theme related to the attitudes of the patients towards the disease, and specifically, supportive relationships, an optimistic view, and denial of the disease. The second theme concerned the representation of the disease, as related to the patients’ causal attributions. The subthemes that emerged were the disease as message from God, the disease as a random event …