Fatigue in cancer patients

This bachelor thesis deals with the topic and problematics of the role, aspect and contribution of the proffesional nurses in the case of the oncology patient's fatigue.. The aim is To find out not only what are the possibilities of influencing the whole process of onkology patients' fatigue but how they are applied in practice as well. Furthermore the process of how is the cancer patients' fatigue documented and evaluated is also pointed out as well as the patients' perception of tiredness. In the practical part of the thesis was used qualitative research in the form of semi-structured interviews. The research group consisted of nine nurses and nine patients of selected oncology departments in the Czech hospitals. The choice of all the respondents was deliberate. The given interviews were processed by the open coding technique using pencil and paper. Nine categories were created during the process of evaluation of the interviews with nurses. Patient interviews were evaluated in seven categories. Some of the groups are divided into subcategories according to their specialization. The research shows that this - the whole process of fatigue is a symptom that is often neglected by nursing staff. The research also points out has shown that nurses do not follow up with assessing and recording fatigue in the patient's documentation as they should. They don´t carry out all possible interventions to affect fatigue. The results also showed that the majority of nurses do not educate the patients about the possibilities of affecting tiredness despite the fact that the nurse can influence not only the patient's physical condition but the psychological state as well by good nursing care, which is directly reflected in the level of patients' fatigue