Brief psychological intervention among treatment-seeking cancer patients: A randomized controlled trial

Background: Cancer is one of the major leading causes of death, and psychological interventions are found to be helpful to reduce the distress related to the disease. The study investigated the effect of nurse-led brief psychological intervention among treatment-seeking clients with head and neck and breast cancer. Methods: This study is a randomized controlled trial, in which a total of 80 subjects were consecutively recruited using block randomization method and as per the sampling criteria. A trained nurse delivered a 30-min individual-based brief psychological intervention and the subjects in the control group received the usual hospital care. The outcome measures were changes in quality of life (QoL) and psychological distress based on the Hindi Version of Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-General and DASS-21 during a 1-month follow-up. Results: The mean age of the sample was 52.68 (standard deviation = 10). The study observed a significant improvement in the overall and separate domains of QoL (P < 0.01) and reduction of psychological distress (P < 0.01) in the intervention group as compared to the control group during the 1-month follow-up. Conclusion: The nurse-led brief psychological intervention may be an effective strategy for improving the QoL and reducing the psychological distress in treatment-seeking cancer individuals in this setting. Considering the short-term effect of this clinical intervention trial, more studies should be conducted in similar settings for an evidence base to advocate supportive nursing care practices in the routine oncology clinical setting.