Cancer care from the perspectives of older women.
OBJECTIVE
To understand how older age affects cancer care, from the perspectives of older women.


METHODS
Qualitative, participatory.


METHODS
Urban southern region of Ontario, Canada.


METHODS
Purposive sample (age groups and income) of 15 women diagnosed with cancer at age 70 or older; 10 women were diagnosed with breast cancer, 5 with gynecologic cancer.


METHODS
Two face-to-face interviews, with data analysis in collaboration with the project team based on constructivist grounded theory, including negative case analysis.


METHODS
Age, experience of cancer care.


RESULTS
Age-related life and health circumstances intersect with professional practice and wider social contexts and are implicated in treatment decision making, including decisions against treatment, as well as in the day-to-day "getting around" that cancer care requires.


CONCLUSIONS
The nursing history should be holistic in scope, attending to the supportive care domains to elicit older women's physical, social, practical, informational, psychological, and spiritual needs after a diagnosis of cancer. History taking should draw forward older women's life contexts and examine these contexts in relation to cancer care, including treatment decision making.


CONCLUSIONS
Individual-level care and systems advocacy are required to ensure that older women's worries about sustaining independence, including worries generated by inadequacies in home-based care, do not act as determinants of treatment choices.
Sinding
Chris
C
Health Studies Programme and School of Social Work at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. sinding@mcmaster.ca
Wiernikowski
Jennifer
J
Aronson
Jane
J
D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy*; D009859:Oncology Nursing / Q000379:methods; D010358:Patient Participation / Q000523:psychology; D036301:Qualitative Research; D014930:Women / Q000523:psychology*