title: [Life experience of inpatients with recurrent breast cancer].
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Understanding daily life experiences of patients admitted to hospital with recurrent breast cancer.
  
  
  METHODS
  The grounded theory method was used for this study.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Consistent comparative analysis was used throughout the study to obtain the results. Results showed that inpatients with recurrent breast cancer experience 'a co-existence of life suffering and fear of death'. The causal condition of this result was determined to be 'patient's response to cancer recurrence (acceptance/despair)', including contextual conditions such as, 'previous experience with cancer treatment', 'patient's current physical condition', and 'treatment methods for recurrent cancer'. Intervening conditions, such as 'a strong will to live', 'family support', 'moral support providers', and action/interaction strategies were found to provide patients with 'a strength to live'. Shown in these results, inpatients with recurrent breast cancer were seen to have a simultaneous 'hope for life and fear of death'.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  When providing nursing services to inpatients with recurrent breast cancer, people must recognize there is a notable difference between individual patients' contextual conditions and interactive strategies. Henceforth, proper cognitive nursing must be provided which encourages patients to maintain a strong will to overcome the many hardships of treatment as well as physical nursing, such as management of side effects caused by chemotherapy.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nursing, Daejeon Health Sciences College, Daejeon, Korea. yjkim@hit.ac.kr
authors.forename: Young Ju
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Kim
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001293:Attitude to Death; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000523:psychology*; D005195:Family Relations; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008016:Life Change Events; D008875:Middle Aged; D009364:Neoplasm Recurrence, Local / Q000523:psychology*; D011788:Quality of Life; D013315:Stress, Psychological