Summary
To deal and live with cancer is a trying experience faced by a substantial
number of persons every year. Cancer causes physical and moral suffering
and gives rise to many losses, uncertainty and thoughts of death. All this
affects the quality of life and the well-being of the patients. To face up to the
illness of cancer requires to be made and development of coping strategies.
Spiritual well-being has been identified as a good indicator of the quality of
life in oncology. The theory of Omnipresence of cancer developed by Shaha
(2003, 2013) serves as a frame of reference to this study. This correlational
descriptive study is aiming to ascertain the spiritual well-being of patients
diagnosed with cancer and under treatment, to describe their various ways of
coping and to establish a correlation between patients’ spiritual well-being,
their coping strategies and their social, demographic and health
backgrounds. Data was collected at a university oncology center. The
convenience sample consisted of 48 participants, of which were 22 women.
Measuring instruments used were the FACIT – Sp (Peterman, Fitchett,
Hernandez, & Cella, 2002) for the spiritual well-being and the Jalowiec
Coping Scale (Jalowiec, 1983) for the adjustment strategies. Participants
demonstrated a moderate level of spiritual well-being. The spiritual and the
religious perspective of patients testified to the diversity of the forms and the
expressions of spirituality and of cultural influence. Optimism is the coping
style the most used by the participants to deal with the illness. It is also
considered the most effective. In the whole, the results show that managing