Iranian Journal of

Introduction: Breast cancer is known as the most prevalent cancer among women. The cancer and its treatments including chemotherapy impose many symptoms and side effects and impress the patients’ life quality and family members. Therefore, they need the knowledge, understanding and abilities rather than factors influencing the quality of their lives. This study has been accomplished to explore the effect of family-centered empowerment model on the functional scales quality of life in women with breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy.

Methods: The present study is a clinical trial, a quasi-experimental study. The selection of 70 women with breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy in both intervention and control groups was done through purposive sampling. The research tools included demographic questionnaire, questionnaire information about the disease and treatment and quality of life are two standard questionnaires (QLQ-C30, QLQ-Br23). Family-centered empowerment model in the intervention group and post-test one month after the intervention examined.

Results: The results showed that the implementation of model improving the general functional scales (physical, role, cognitive, emotional and social) for patients in the intervention group (P<0.05). The specific function of scales in the two groups after the intervention in terms of body image, sexual performance and sexual pleasure, there was no significant difference (P>0.05) but after coming back attitude was improved in the intervention group.

Conclusion: The results showed that the implementation of the empowerment family- centered on the promotion of general and specific functional scale (with the exception of the aspects of body image, sexual function and sexual pleasure) quality of life for women with breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy was effective.