Abstract
Individuals diagnosed with advanced cancer frequently experience physical and psychological
distress. Hope has been identified as an essential resource in the lives of people
with cancer, helping them to cope during times of suffering and uncertainty. Therefore,
in order to help bolster hope, health care providers require an understanding of its
meaning from the perspective of advanced cancer patients and an awareness of those
interventions demonstrated empirically to foster hope in this patient population.
This paper summarises salient evidence pertaining to hope in advanced cancer patients
and their families or informal caregivers. We examine the challenging issue of how
to define hope, discuss the issue of measuring hope and review the state of evidence
addressing interventions that may enhance or bolster hope in the face of advanced
disease.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: March 25, 2008
Accepted:
February 25,
2008
Received:
February 4,
2008
Identification
Copyright
© 2008 Elsevier Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
