The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of meditation on the perceived pain intensity of cancer patients. It was felt that such a study would assist in providing physicians and other medical care providers with a more empirical look at alternative treatments for cancer pain and that, as a result, they and other medical care personnel would be more inclined to use these alterative treatments for pain patients in general and cancer pain patients in particular.
The conducted study tested the hypothesis that the level of pain intensity subjects were perceiving at present (as measured by PPI scores on the short form of the McGill Pain Questionnaire) would be significantly reduced following their practice of a mindfulness meditation technique that was taught to them by the researcher.
All subjects (N = 15) in the study were female patients who were drawn from the female population of the Oncology Ward at Montefiore Hospital. All subjects volunteered to be in the study after having it explained to them and signing an informed consent form.
The study used a pre-experimental, one-group, pretest-posttest design in which subjects were first assessed for their present level of perceived pain intensity using the short form of the McGill Pain Questionnaire. They were then taught the mindfulness meditation technique, and asked to practice it for 30 minutes. Three hours later they were assessed again for their present level of perceived pain intensity using the same test instrument.
Demographic analyses conducted on age and ethnicity data indicated that there was strong variance in subjects' ages. Further, they were a relatively ethnically mixed sample of patients including white, black, hispanic and asian women.
A one-way within analysis of variance conducted on subjects' present pain intensity scores confirmed the research hypothesis. That is, subjects' posttest present pain intensity scores were significantly ...