Emotional Support Focused Nurse Directed Intervention - Face to Face Confrontation on Serum Cortisol-A Dose Response Effect among Breast Cancer Survivors

Context: Nurses can support the breast cancer women well by listening to them, accepting their emotions and informing them in detail. Therewith, they can convey a sense of security to the women and help them to maintain hope and the ability to deal with reality.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficiency of dose response effect with Emotional support focused nurse directed intervention on serum cortisol among breast cancer survivors.

Methods: 40 breast cancer survivors were checked with serum cortisol before and after the intervention. 20 participants in experimental arm and 20 in control arm were administered with Emotional support focused nurse directed intervention for the period of 30-45 minutes, five times in a week for three months which indicates the larger dose response effect in experimental arm and control arm received the same treatment thrice in a week to indicate the smaller dose response effect.

Results: Comparison of Paired t test value of pre and posttest serum cortisol scores between experimental arm and control arm showed 4.56 and 2.89 respectively which indicates the significance of Emotional support focused nurse directed intervention on serum cortisol.

Conclusion: Larger dose response could be effective than the smaller dose response with only minimal effectiveness for breast cancer survivors.