The Workplace Experiences of Breast Cancer Survivors: A Survey of an Online Community

Ka Ryeong Bae; Sun Young Kwon

doi:10.5388/aon.2016.16.4.208

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Bae and Kwon: The Workplace Experiences of Breast Cancer Survivors: A Survey of an Online Community

Original Article

Asian Oncology Nursing 2016; 16(4): 208-216.

Published online: 31 December 2016

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5388/aon.2016.16.4.208

The Workplace Experiences of Breast Cancer Survivors: A Survey of an Online Community

Ka Ryeong Bae¹, Sun Young Kwon²

¹College of Nursing, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea.

²Knowledge Management Institute, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea.

Address reprint requests to: Kwon, Sun Young. Senior Researcher, Knowledge Management Institute, 25-2, Sungkyunkwan-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 03063, Korea. Tel: +82-10-9852-1328, Fax: +82-2-760-1214, freesson@gmail.com

Received 2 October 2016 Revised 25 November 2016 Accepted 13 December 2016

(open-access):

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Purpose

This study attempted to examine those who experienced working after breast cancer diagnosis or job retention after timeoff or resignation.

Methods

Data collection and analysis were conducted using the biggest community website which contains articles written and discussed by breast cancer survivors. We used semantic network analysis to identify context of various keywords from collected 1,186 articles. After refining, we analyzed 212 keywords. Data were analyzed using two methodological approaches, ‘network analysis and data visualization’ (NodeXl & PFnet).

Results

As a result, 6 groups were classified; ‘conflict between breast cancer and job’, ‘difficulty of working and treatment parallel’, ‘breast cancer management while working’, ‘busy and hard life but showing gratitude’, ‘my body needs’, and ‘my heart needs’. We found that even though they had difficulties of working and treatment at the same time, they were thankful for their life. and they also reprogrammed their mind for more positive thinking through exercise for the health management and establishing a good eating habit.

Conclusion

This paper will argue that we need to identify the experiences of cancer survivors. This allows the growth of the improvement working environment, the direction of policy, and the concern and understanding of nurses to needs of breast canner patients was definitely needed.

Keywords: Breast Neoplasms, Survivors, Return to Work, Online Community, Semantic Network Analysis

Figures and Tables

Fig. 1

The PFnet (q= n-1, r= ∞) visualization of the 212 node co-occurrence network. G1= Group 1; G2= Group 2; G3= Group 3; G4= Group 4; G5= Group 5; G6= Group 6.

Table 1

Semantic Network Analysis Result of Keywords on Bulletin Board Messages (N=13,975)

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