Cancer diagnosis and treatments may present severe adversity and challenge an individual adaptation ability. Individual resilience might be an important factor influencing the response to adversity in adult cancer patients. To date, the concept of individual resilience in adults with cancer has not been analysed in detail.
To conceptualise resilience in adult cancer care.
A concept analysis.
Studies published between 2008 and 2019 were searched in MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Embase, Web of Knowledge and Scopus databases. Additional records were identified by manually searching reference lists of relevant studies. Quantitative and qualitative studies that investigated resilience in adult cancer care were included.
Walker and Avant's method of concept analysis was employed. The key elements for conceptualising resilience in adult cancer care (including defining attributes, antecedents and consequences of resilience) were identified from included articles.
53 included articles provided data for resilience conceptualisation. Analysis identified three defining attributes: (1) ego resiliency; (2) recalibration; and (3) interaction with the environment. Antecedents of resilience were cancer-related adversity, and consequences of resilience which were divided into two categories: (1) psychological distress level; and (2) individual functioning performance (physical, psychological and social functioning).
Our conceptualisation of individual resilience based on the defining attributes, antecedents and consequences resulted in a preliminary conceptual model. This model can be further tested and may inform the development of cancer-specific resilience measures and interventions for adults with cancer focusing on individual resilience.