[An exploratory study of hospice care to patients with advanced cancer]

True nursing care means total nursing care which includes physical, emotional and spiritual care. The modern nursing care has tendency to focus toward physical care and needs attention toward emotional and spiritual care. The total nursing care is mandatory for patients with terminal cancer and for this purpose, hospice care became emerged. Hospice care originated from the place or shelter for the travellers to Jerusalem in medieval stage. However, the meaning of modern hospice care became changed to total nursing care for dying patients. Modern hospice care has been developed in England, and spreaded to U.S.A. and Canada for the patients with terminal cancer. Nowadays, it became a part of nursing care and the concept of hospice care extended to the palliative care of the cancer patients. Recently, it was introduced to Korea and received attention as model of total nursing care. This study was attempted to assess the efficacy of hospice care. The purpose of this study was to prove a difference in terms of physical, emotional and spiritual aspect between the group who received hospice care and who didn't receive hospice care. The subject for this study were 113 patients with advanced cancer who were hospitalized in the 8 different hospitals. 67 patients received hospice care in 4 different hospitals, and 46 patients didn't receive hospice care in another 4 different hospitals. The method of this study was the questionnaire which was made through the descriptive study. The descriptive study was made by individual contact with 102 patients of advanced cancer for 9 months period. The measurement tool for questionaire was made by author through the descriptive study, and included the personal religious orientation obtained from chung (originated R. Fleck) and 5 emotional stages before dying from Kübler Ross. The content of questionnaire consisted in 67 items which included 11 for general characteristics, 10 for related condition with cancer, 13 for wishes for physical therapy, 13 for emotional reactions and 20 for personal religious orientation. Data for this study was collected from Aug. 25 to Oct. 6 by author and 4 other nurse's who received education and training by author for the collection of data. The collected data were analysed using descriptive statistics, X2-test, t-test and pearson correlation coefficient. Results of the study were as follows: "H.C Group" means the group of patient with cancer who received hospice care. "Non H.C Group" means the group of patient with cancer who did not receive hospice care.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)