What do cancer patients identify as supportive and unsupportive behaviour of nurses? A pilot study

Social support has been claimed to have positive effects on a variety of outcomes, including physical health, mental well-being and social functioning, and yet, its nature, meaning and measurement are still being debated in the literature. This pilot study set out to identify, within the theoretical framework of the social support literature, supportive and unsupportive nurse behaviours as perceived of by eight hospitalized patients diagnosed with a haematological malignancy. The findings of the semi-structured interviews appear to suggest that emotionally supportive behavior patterns are the most frequently identified helpful nurse interactions reported by individuals with cancer, followed by informationally supportive behavior. The most frequently identified unsupportive nurse behaviours were those perceived of as being devoid of an emotional component. Tentative conclusions for practice are drawn from these findings and considerations for future research are presented. In accordance with work by Dunkel-Schetter (1984) the terms supportive and unsupportive are operationalized throughout this paper as the more familiar terms helpful and unhelpful.