Occupational Therapy in Oncology and Palliative Care

Cancer is a chronic disease that may occur in both children and adults. Occupational therapy focuses on the activity limitations and participation problems in their life. Oncology rehabilitation involves in helping an individual with cancer to regain maximum physical, psychological, cognitive, social, and vocational functioning with the limits up to disease and its treatments in an interdisciplinary team concept. These treatment options are associated with the risk of some side effects, including fatigue, pain, cognitive problems, decrease in bone density and muscle endurance, weight loss, and stress- or anxiety-related psychosocial problems. Occupational therapy approaches are a holistic view in a client center and use training in activities of daily living, assistive technology, education of energy conservation techniques, and management of treatment-related problems, such as pain, fatigue, and nausea. In palliative and hospice care, occupational therapists support clients with cancer by minimizing the secondary symptoms related to cancer and its treatments. At the end of life, occupational therapy offers to identify the roles and activities that are meaningful and purposeful to the client with cancer and try to determine the barriers that limit their performance. Clients with cancer who have childhood cancer or adult cancer can face problems about body structure and functions, activity, and participation, which may limit their participation to their daily life

Rehabilitation of Patients with Prostate Cancer

Cancer rehabilitation involves helping an individual with cancer to regain maximum psychological, physical, cognitive, social, and vocational functioning with the limits up to disease and its treatments in an interdisciplinary team concept. Prostate cancer is one of the most frequent male malignancies in the world. Prostate cancer treatment options have the risk of some side effects including loss of muscle strength, fatigue, pain, urinary incontinence, erectile dysfunction, cognitive problems, decrease in bone density, weight loss, gynecomastia, and hot flushes with stress-related psychosocial problems. Relative to other cancers, the prognosis of men with prostate cancer is much better and the potential treatment-related side effects have important implications which can affect the health-related quality of life (QOL) of this population. Recent studies support the efficiency of multimodal treatment to recognize, prevent, and increase functional recovery with an interdisciplinary rehabilitation team which includes physical and occupational therapists. This chapter describes briefly cancer rehabilitation and rehabilitation approaches at every stage of patients with prostate cancer for minimizing the morbidity rate associated with prostate cancer treatment to increase occupational participation and improve QOL

Psychological Violence Behaviors Experienced by Disabled Employees at Hacettepe University (Mobbing) and the Effects of These Behaviors

Objective: Mobbing reflects as a detaining or intimidating one or more persons in a workplace, which continues in a systematic manner for a certain period of time, harms people's professional status, personality values, social relations or health; malicious, deliberate negative behavior. This study was conducted to determine the psychological violence behaviors of disabled personnel working at Hacettepe University in the workplace and the effects of these behaviors on disabled employees. Material and Methods: 30 disabled people who work in the public participated to the research. The evaluation was conducted between April and May 2014 with a three-part questionnaire. In the first part demographic information of the participants was obtained. In the second part, the psychological violence behaviors they were exposed and in the third part the social, physiological and psychological effects of the violent behaviors they were exposed were questioned. Results: People with disabilities who were included in the study were found to have been most exposed "to interrupt while talking frequently" and "to be humiliated by others". The effect after the applied mobbing behavior was stated as "I feel stressed and tired myself". These effects and behaviors were expressed by 10-16% of individuals. Conclusion: It has been determined that most of the disabled people working at Hacettepe University have not experienced mobbing behavior but a few have experienced deliberately mobbing behavior. We believe that efforts to minimize the effects of mobbing in disabled workers will help prevent mobbing behavior and improve the working environment of disabled people

Adaptation and validation of Turkish version of musculoskeletal pain intensity and interference questionnaire for musicians

Adaptation and validation ofTurkish version of musculoskeletal painintensity and interference questionnaire formusiciansBS Akel, Ö BelenHacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey. Objective: There are certain pain questionnaires orscales that are translated and adapted to Turkish;however, we observed an absence of an assessmenttool to examine pain in Turkish-speaking musicians.The Musculoskeletal Pain Intensity and InterferenceQuestionnaire for Musicians (MPIIQM) evaluated notonly the severity of pain, but also the impact of pain onquality of life and the experience of playing the instrument. The aim of this study was to translate and adaptthe MPIIQM in Turkish; and to test its validity and reliability for Turkish-speaking musicians whom havepain and pain-related music-playing issues.Methods: The MPIIQM was translated into Turkish bytwo independent native Turkish speakers. Translationswere compared for inconsistencies and aggregatedinto a single Turkish version. This version then alsowas back-translated into English by two independentnative English speakers. After the back-translationswere compared for inconsistencies and aggregatedinto a single form, the final English version and the original questionnaire were also compared for inconsistencies. Finally, the original English questionnaireand the Turkish questionnaire was reviewed by abilingual team, to check for the errors of interpretation and nuances that might have been missed. TheTurkish questionnaire was finalized after consensus.The study was conducted on 60 professional musicians whom had pain-related playing issues. TheMcGill Pain Questionnaire and Disabilities of Arm,Shoulder and Hand questionnaire (DASH) were alsoadministered, within an interval of 7 days (retest).Instrument test-retest reliability was assessed withthe interclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and withthe Pearson’s correlation coefficient.Results: Translation and back-translation revealedno major difficulties. Reliability of the Turkish versionof the questionnaire was very good, with high consistency and reproducibility. The MPIIQM Turkish versionshowed a high correlation with the DASH and McGillquestionnaires.Conclusions: In conclusion, the results displayed thatthe Turkish version of the MPIIQM is a reliable andvalid region-specific version and proper for use onmusicians. It seemed to be a reliable, consistent andvalid instrument in evaluating the pain intensity andimpact of pain on musicians.</p

The effect of hypermobility on pain and postural problems in violoncello players

Instrument training is a challenging process that takes many years of physical and psychological burdens. In this process,performers experience stress due to their long working time, inadequate resting breaks and excessive working time.Accumulated stress and increased anxiety levels can let individuals live different somatic experiences. It is thought thatincreased anxiety level may stress the musculoskeletal system and cause repeated muscle contractions and spasms. Theaim of this study was to investigate the relationship between anxiety levels and upper extremity pain experiences ofindividuals studying violoncello. Nineteen bachleor and high school degree students between 13 and 28 years (18,05±4,156)volunteered to participate to the study. To determine pain with its region, Mc Gill Melzack pain questionnaire wasadministered. Visual Anolog Scale was also used to detect pain intensity before, during and after the performance. BeckAnxiety Questionnaire was used to evaluate anxiety levels. SPSS 20.0 program was used for statistical analysis. Descriptivestatistics of demographic characteristics, pain and anxiety severity of the individuals were determined. Pearson correlationanalysis was used to determine the relationship between pain severity and anxiety levels.The Beck Anxiety Scale scores showed that 52.6% of the participants had mild anxiety, 31.6% had moderate anxiety, and15.8% had severe anxiety. In addition, 94.7% (18 individuals) of these individuals stated that they had pain problems.The pain was most common in the wrist, shoulder and scapular region. There was a positive correlation between anxietyand resting pain severity (r =, 507, p &lt;0.05); however there was no correlation between the severity of pain and anxietyduring the performance (p&gt; 0.05).It was determined that the level of anxiety caused individuals to experience pain during rest without mechanical stress.Individuals who experience pain due to psychosocial experiences, especially the upper extremity, may cause individuals tobe vulnerable. The fact that the relation was not found during performance may be due to the activation of different factorsduring playing violoncello. If the pain resulting from psychosocial problems becomes cumulative, it may adversely affectthe musician’s hand functions in the future. Further studies including long-term follow-up of upper extremity functionsand psychosocial status of musicians with negative psychological experience such as stress anxiety are recommended.</p