Theoretical Perspectives of the Effect of Immunotherapy on the Quality of Life of Cancer Patients

Abstract

Immunotherapy is a type of treatment that improves an individual’s ability to detect and attack cancerous tissues. The main objective of adopting immunotherapy in cancer treatment is to improve the patient’s quality of life (QoL). To address the problems faced by cancer patients post immunotherapy, it is critical to conduct an extensive review to understand the factors impacting the QoL of immunotherapy patients. Quality of life is a concept very relevant to the discipline of nursing. With instrument development and population description, oncology nurses have improved the quality of life in cancer patients. The theoretical proposition of behavior change may be the best fit for understanding the difference in cancer patients’ quality of life after immunotherapy, but it has limited scope of application considering its deficit in theoretical components. In cooperation with doctors and other health professionals, nurses need to develop a conceptual framework of QoL specific to immunotherapy to measure patient‐reported outcomes in this cohort of patients.

Keywords

• immunotherapy
• cancer
• quality of life
• cancer theory
• cancer patient