Abstract

Background: Spiritual well-being harmonizes several dimensions of human's life and is essential for coping with diseases. Chronic illnesses such as cancer cause crisis in physical, psychological and spiritual dimensions of ones life. This study aimed to measure the spiritual well-being in cancer patients who underwent chemotherapy.

Methods: In this descriptive and cross-sectional study, Paloutzian & Ellison's Spiritual well-being Self-report questionnaire was completed by 130 cancer patients in Imam Khomeini Hospital. Patients were recruited using sequential sampling method. The inclusion criteria were being over 16 years old, and having the ability to read and write. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and chi-square test in SPSS v 13.

Results: Findings revealed that the mean scores for spiritual well-being, religious well-being and existential well-being were (88/42±15/02), (44/28±7/77) and (44/14±8/44) respectively. In addition, statistically significant relations were not found between age, gender, marital status and educational levels with spiritual well-being (P>0/001).

Conclusions: This study showed that the level of spiritual well-being was moderate in cancer patients. Moreover, the level of religious well-being was similar to existential well-being. The researchers suggest the conduction of more studies in this issue.

Key words: Cancer, Chemotherapy, Spiritual well-being.