Introduction
Selecting appropriate resources is crucial for conducting high-quality research, especially when specific interventions and outcomes are studied. This paper outlines the evidence search strategy used for the current study on the effect of shared prayer on cancer patients’ stress levels. The study addresses the following research question: “Do registered nurses who utilize prayer with willing patients during chemotherapy find the patients less stressed after a treatment than patients who do not want to utilize prayer?” Several credible medical databases were searched for relevant, peer-reviewed papers on the topic, using appropriate combinations of search terms and additional criteria to ensure the quality of the results.
For evidence search, the following online databases were used:
- ProQuest
- Cochrane Library
- PubMed
Applying the selected search words, including “chemotherapy,” “prayer,” and “stress,” and limiting the search to peer-reviewed scholarly articles published in English within the last five years yielded a large pool of useful sources. Though not all of them were fully applicable to the research question, most of them provided a coherent picture that will inform future research on the selected topic. While ProQuest contained the largest amount of high-quality articles, the Cochrane Library was the most precise in terms of relevance of the suggested results.
ProQuest
For this database, I used “chemotherapy,” “prayer,” and “stress” as the primary search terms based on the explored topic and question, which yielded 723 articles. This result was achieved by incrementally adding search parameters and delimiters and included only peer-reviewed articles in English published in scholarly journals within the last five years. The resulting set consisted mostly of relevant articles that offered valuable perspectives from different contexts.
For example, Abusanad et al. (2024) and Çelik and Çmar (2023) showed that prayer is widely used among Muslim caregivers and nurses as a complementary and alternative treatment for willing cancer patients. The authors show that the associated improvements in emotional well-being and spiritual health often lead to reduced stress levels and greater resilience, especially among female patients. Stöcker et al. (2023) supported these findings, suggesting that alternative and complementary approaches, such as prayer and other religious activities, significantly increase cancer patients’ satisfaction with medical procedures, including chemotherapy.
Cochrane Library
For this database, following the research question’s formulation, the main search words were “chemotherapy,” “prayer,” and “stress,” which initially populated only one article. Removing “stress” from the list of search words and setting the criteria for including only papers published within the last five years populated seven sources, all of which were peer-reviewed controlled trials. All of the corresponding articles were relevant to some degree to the present research, offering helpful information that aligned with the findings from the aforementioned studies. Specifically, Komariah et al. (2020) demonstrated that nursing interventions involving shared prayer positively affected the emotional health, healing motivation, and overall well-being of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Additionally, Afrasiabifar et al. (2021) showed that spiritual interventions involving prayer have significant potential to promote hope and spiritual well-being among patients undergoing cancer treatment, suggesting their broader use in clinical practice.
PubMed
For this database, “chemotherapy,” “prayer,” and “stress” were used as the main search words, which initially populated 620 results. Among these papers, most did not apply to the current study’s subject, so additional inclusion criteria were established. Limiting the publication date to the last five years and excluding various inappropriate sources (abstracts, retracted articles, guidelines, preprints, etc.) reduced the number of populated articles to 134, most of which were generally relevant. Among those, Sira et al. (2020) showed that spirituality, religious beliefs, and practices, including prayer, are among the strongest predictors of adaptive coping among cancer patients, contributing to overall stress reduction and enhanced well-being. However, most of the published articles focused on the impact of spirituality in general on cancer patients’ physical and mental health and resilience, offering less specific evidence.
Conclusion
The applied evidence search strategy was based on searches across several credible medical science databases: ProQuest, Cochrane Library, and PubMed. The search used three keywords that align with the current study’s research question. The publication date limit for all studies was set at 5 years, and English was set as the articles’ primary language. Additionally, although the selected databases generally contain only peer-reviewed articles, this criterion was given specific attention during the research.
The databases yielded different numbers of relevant articles, with ProQuest and the Cochrane Library being, respectively, the most abundant and the most precise. Most of the identified resources were appropriate to the selected research topic and question. In combination, they provide a coherent picture of the scholarly consensus supporting the idea that spiritual interventions have a positive impact on chemotherapy patients’ stress levels. However, some papers were less specific about the type of intervention and the nature of treatment that particular cancer patients were undergoing. Nevertheless, the outlined strategy has proven reliable and robust, delivering relevant, high-quality papers on the study’s topic.
References
Abusanad, A., Ujaimi, R., Alotaibi, M. A., Alharbi, L. A., Alatawi, N., Algarni, A. A., & Samkari, A. (2024). Exploring integrative approaches: Insights into complementary medicine practices among breast cancer survivors in Saudi Arabia. Cureus, 16(1), 1-14.
Afrasiabifar, A., Mosavi, A., Jahromi, A. T., & Hosseini, N. (2021). Randomized controlled trial study of the impact of a spiritual intervention on hope and spiritual well-being of persons with cancer. Investigacion y educacion en enfermeria, 39(3).
Çelik, A., & Çmar, D. (2023). Spiritual well-being levels of formal and informal cancer caregivers in Turkish society and influencing factors: A comparative study. Progress in Health Sciences, 13(2), 7-15.
Komariah, M., Hatthakit, U., & Boonyoung, N. (2020). Impact of Islam-based caring intervention on spiritual well-being in Muslim women with breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy. Religions, 11(7), 361-373.
Stöcker, A., Mehnert-Theuerkauf, A., Hinz, A., & Ernst, J. (2023). Utilization of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) by women with breast cancer or gynecological cancer. Plos One, 18(5).