The chain mediating effect of spiritual well-being and anticipatory grief between benefit finding and meaning in life of patients with advanced lung cancer: Empirical research quantitative.
Qingyue Luo, Fanglin Liu, Zhaoyu Jiang and 1 others
PMID 38943318WHAT IT FOUND
Among 400 patients with advanced lung cancer, higher benefit finding linked to stronger meaning in life, partly through better spiritual well-being and lower anticipatory grief.
This association was measured at one time point, so it does not show that boosting benefit finding causes greater meaning.
Key findings
01Benefit finding was positively associated with meaning in life and spiritual well-being, and negatively associated with anticipatory grief.
02In a structural model, benefit finding had a positive direct effect on meaning in life, and spiritual well-being and anticipatory grief each mediated part of that relationship.
03Anticipatory grief and spiritual well-being together formed a chain mediating pathway between benefit finding and meaning in life, though this indirect effect accounted for 3.7% of the total effect.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The study was cross-sectional, so the direction of association between benefit finding, spiritual well-being, anticipatory grief and meaning in life cannot be established. All measures were self-reported by patients in a single hospital in China, which limits generalisability and introduces common-method bias. Convenience sampling from one inpatient department means the sample may not represent outpatients, other regions or patients with cognitive impairment or delirium, who were excluded. The authors state that no details of ethical approval for research with human subjects were provided, despite citing an approval number elsewhere in the paper. The chain mediating effect was statistically significant but accounted for only 3.7% of the total effect, so its practical contribution to meaning in life is modest.
Declared interests
The authors declared no business or financial relationships that could be interpreted as a conflict of interest, and the study received no additional funding.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the structural model as evidence that nursing interventions to increase benefit finding will improve meaning in life. The study measured associations at one time point in a convenience sample, and the authors' recommended four-step protocol was not tested here.