Assessment of symptoms among among patients living with cancer: prevalence, distress and its correlation with quality of life

Background: Several symptoms known to be experienced by cancer patients receiving palliative care remain under-reported, inadequately managed and unexplored in Jordan. Aim: To describe the prevalence of symptoms, the distress caused and the correlation with quality-of-life among cancer patients receiving palliative care in Jordan. Methods: A cross-sectional correlational survey design was used. The Rotterdam Symptom Checklist and the Quality-of-Life Index-Cancer version were used for data collection. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, unpaired t-test and Pearson correlation coefficients. Results: The sample comprises of 124 patients with a mean age of 55.7 years (SD=12.9). A total of 57.3% of them were females. Patients reported having an average of 17.3 (SD=7.1) symptoms. The most reported symptoms were tiredness (90.3%), lack of energy (81.5%), sore muscles (81.5%) and worry (76.6%). The mean total score for quality of life was 17.9 (SD=5.9) out of 30.A negative (p<0.05) relationship was found between the number of concurrent symptoms and the total quality of life score. Conclusions: Palliative care patients in Jordan reported a high number of co-occurring symptoms and experienced high levels of symptom distress, which negatively impacted their quality of life. Further research to evaluate the impact of total symptom management, its efficacy and feasibility is needed.