The delay and worry experience of African American women with breast cancer

Purpose/Objectives: To examine the delay in seeking treatment and worry experiences of African American women with breast cancer. Design: Descriptive, correlational. Setting: Urban northeastern United States. Sample: 60 African American women diagnosed with breast cancer. Methods: Consenting participants completed the worry subscale of the Ware Health Perception questionnaire and a Demographic and Illness-Related Information Sheet during a one-hour personal interview. Data analysis consisted of descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations. Main Research Variables: Delay in seeking treatment, worry about breast cancer and symptoms, and sociodemographic characteristics. Findings: Contrary to the literature, participants reported short patient and provider delay. As a result of little variability in delay, predicting those for whom worry was a deterrent or a motivator to seek prompt treatment was not possible. Conclusions: Although delay does exist, African American women with sociodemographic characteristics similar to white women who do not delay are likely to have similarly short symptom durations. Further study to determine who is helped and who is hurt by worry and other possible intervening factors would be useful. Including biologic characteristics such as tumor staging and hormone receptor information in future studies would allow for a closer examination of stage at diagnosis and biologic influence. Implications for Nursing: Interventions with African American women cannot assume that delay exists. Strategies that consider both individual and cultural group differences are essential to the early seeking of a diagnosis and treatment for breast cancer symptoms among African American women.