Moderating Effect of Inner Strength between Mood Status and Quality of Life in Female Patients with Lung Cancer

Purpose: This study aimed to examine associations among inner strength, mood status, symptom experience, and quality of life in women with lung cancer and to investigate whether inner strength has a moderating effect on these relationships. Methods: This study used a cross-sectional design to analyze 106 women with lung cancer in the National Cancer Center. A hierarchical regression analysis was conducted on the influence of quality of life. For the moderating effects, the Johnson–Neyman methods were applied using the SPSS PROCESS macro. Results: The significant factors of quality of life were inner strength, symptom experiences, total mood disturbance, accounting for 70.7% of the variance. Inner strength had a moderating effect on the relationship between total mood disturbance and quality of life. This means that when women have higher inner strength, there is a significantly less negative effect of total mood disturbance on quality of life. Conclusion: Female patients with lung cancer who experienced inner strength can improve the quality of life as well as reduce the negative impact of mood status on the quality of life. Therefore, these findings support the theory of inner strength and provide nurses with an opportunity to foster the development of this theory in female cancer survivors.