Abstract:
The purposes of this predictive correlational research were to study quality of life and to examine the predictability of predicting factors; symptoms experience, adherence to chemotherapy and social support to the quality of life among colorectal cancer patients with colostomy receiving chemotherapy. One hundred and ten colorectal cancer patients with colostomy receiving chemotherapy were recruited from the chemotherapy unit of the National cancer institute, Siriraj Hospital, King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital and Faculty of Medicine Vajira Hospital University of Bangkok Metropolis by a multi-stage sampling strategy. Research instruments were consisted of five parts: (1) The Patients Demographic Data (2) The Quality of life index (3) The Memorial symptom assessment scale (4) The Adherence to chemotherapy and (5) The Social support assessment scale. Content validity was examined by five experts and reliability was tested by using Cronbachs alpha coefficient obtained at.85, .97, .86 and .93 respectively. Descriptive and multiple regression were used in statistical analysis. The major findings were as follows 1. Colorectal cancer patients with colostomy receiving chemotherapy had high level ofquality of life (Mean=79.60, SD=9.59) 2. Symptoms experience was significantly negative related to quality of life at the high level (r=-.629, p<.01) and Social support was significantly positive related to quality of life at moderate level (r=.316, p<.01). There was no relationship of adherence to chemotherapy on quality of life in colorectal cancer patients with colostomy receiving chemotherapy 3. The result of enter regression analysis showed that Symptoms experience, adherence to chemotherapy and social support increase the explained variance in quality of life and variables accounted for 40% of total variance in quality of life. (R2 =.402, p < .05).