Patient’s experiences on receiving radiation therapy for head and neck cancer pre, pending and post treatment: A qualitative study at Bugando medical centre Mwanza, Tanzania

Francis Kazoba* and Juston John

The objective of this study was to present a descriptive summary of patients experiences on receiving radiation treatment for Head And Neck Cancers (HNC). A qualitative descriptive study design was used and 60 patients who undergo radiation therapy for head and neck cancers at Bugando medical centre in Mwanza were randomly selected. The face to face interviews were conducted for data collection to 60 patients who receive radiation treatment for head and neck cancers between April 2021 to June 2021 for descriptive and thematic analysis of data collected. Experiences from interview revealed six main themes: 

Understanding and acceptance of disease, Desire to know the treatment plan and the overall treatment process,Functional disability, Change of body image, Decrease of social interactions, Fear of cancer recurrence. Little attention have been directed in knowing the experiences on receiving radiation treatment by patients. Findings from this study have contributed to the development of head and neck cancer patients support and education to patients and families.

Keywords:

Published on: Aug 23, 2021 Pages: 46-49

Full Text PDF Full Text HTML DOI: 10.17352/2581-5407.000042
CrossMark Publons Harvard Library HOLLIS Search IT Semantic Scholar Get Citation Base Search Scilit OAI-PMH ResearchGate Academic Microsoft GrowKudos Universite de Paris UW Libraries SJSU King Library SJSU King Library NUS Library McGill DET KGL BIBLiOTEK JCU Discovery Universidad De Lima WorldCat VU on WorldCat