The effect of spiritual well-being on symptom experience in patients with cancer

Purpose To explore the effect of spiritual well-being on the symptom experience of patients with cancer. Methods This is a cross-sectional survey that enrolled 459 patients with cancer from three large hospitals in Jordan in 2018. Participants completed questionnaires related to demographic data, spiritual well-being, and symptom experience. Additional information was obtained from the medical record review. We then conducted multiple regression to evaluate if spiritual well-being predicts the patients’ reported symptom distress. Results Patients reported thirty-six symptoms. Of which 15 have a prevalence of more than 30%. Fatigue was the most prevalent symptom ( n = 282, 61.4%), followed by pain ( n = 243, 52.9%) and anxiety ( n = 230, 50.1%). Spiritual well-being predicted 7.1% of the total variance in patients’ symptom distress ( F , 19.650; p