A multidisciplinary team in the care of woman with the breast cancer

I have chosen the following topic for my thesis "The multidisciplinary team in the care for women suffering from breast cancer" not only due to the topicality of the issue, but mainly because I work in a surgery ward where I take care of women suffering from this disease. It is a sad fact that during my tenure in this department, the number of women with this disease has been increasing and their age has been dropping. Modern diagnostic methods determine the diagnosis and a multidisciplinary team suggests the most suitable and efficient treatment. The theoretical part of the thesis deals with the definition of the term 'multidisciplinary team', with its tasks and it also specifies which members of the medical staff belong to the team and what their role is. The theoretical part of the thesis further describes breast tumors, methods of their identification and their treatment, complex nursing care for women suffering from breast cancer and last but not least the importance of prevention. Two objectives were determined within the thesis. The first one was to discover whether a multidisciplinary team is involved in the care for women suffering from oncological breast disease. The other objective was to discover what consequences does the oncological breast disease have on women´s lives in connection with nursing care. Based on these objectives three research questions were identified: How does the multidisciplinary team cooperate in the care for women suffering from breast cancer? What roles does a nurse have within a multidisciplinary team dealing with breast cancer from patients' point of view? What is the most frequent impact of breast cancer on women´s life from the point of view of patients? The thesis was made as a qualitative research. For the purpose of obtaining data, the method of a semi-structured interview was applied. Interviews were recorded in a voice recorder and subsequently converted into writing. The interviews form a significant research base from which categorization and sub-categorization fields are created. The research group comprised eight women in whom breast cancer had been diagnosed and who were hospitalized in the surgery ward in February 2014