國科會 90 年度專題計畫期中報告
計畫名稱:臺灣癌症末期病人存活期之生活品質 相關預後因子之探討— 縱貫性之研 究
計畫編號:NSC-90-2314-B-038-030
計畫主持人:林佳靜
執行單位:台北醫學院 護理學研究所
職稱:教授
This is a 2-year study. The purposes of the first year study were to validate the Taiwanese version fo the Brief Fatigue Inventory. This instrument will be used in the second year of study to investigate the quality of life prognostic factors for survival in terminal cancer patients in Taiwan. A cross-sectional research design was undertaken for this study. The eligibility criteria for participants recruitment included as follows: inpatients or outpatients being followed at a teaching hospital or a medical center, patients with a diagnosis of cancer confirmed by pathology, patients with evidence of metastasic disease, patients over 18 years of age, patients who are able to communicate in Mandarin or Taiwanese, and patients who are willing to participate.
The major instrument used in this study was the Brief Fatigue Inventory (BFI) (Mendoza, Wang, Cleeland, et al., 1999). The BFI was developed in the Pain Research Group by Chalres S. Cleeland to measure fatigue in cancer populations and to determine how much the disease and treatment influence fatigue. It consists of 9 items on a single page. Fatigue and tis interference are measured on numeric scales from 0-10. There are four items that describe patient fatigue at its worst, least, usual,, and now during the normal waking hours, with 0 bing no fatigue, and 10 being fatigue as bad as you can imagine. Seven items describe how much fatigue has interfered with different aspects of the patient’s life during the past 2 hours.
A total of 271 patients participated in this study. The internal consistency of the fatigue intensity is 0.96. The internal consistency of the interference of daily life is 0.96. The construct validity was supported by a significant correlation between the fatigue intensity measured by the BFI and the fatigue subscale of the POMS (r=0.90, p = 0.00).
The first year study has supported the validity of the Taiwanese version of the BFI. This instrument can provide a useful tool in the second year study to
investigate the quality of life prognostic factors for survival in terminal cancer patients in Taiwan.