Background: Cancer is a highly stressful life event. It requires the employment of new coping skills and strategies. Flexibility in coping with stress plays an important role in this case. The aim of the study was to assess the role of personal resources in shaping the flexi-bility in coping with stress among cancer patients depending on the level of perceived stress.Participants and procedure: One hundred eight patients suffering from cancer were surveyed. The following methods were employed: the Resiliency Meas-urement Scale by Ogińska-Bulik and Juczyński, the Adult Hope Scale by Snyder, the Spirituality Index of Well-Being by Daaleman and Frey, the Flexibility in Coping with Stress Questionnaire by Basińska and team and the Global Measure of Per-ceived Stress by Cohen, Kamarck and Mermelstein.Results: The results demonstrated a positive correlation between all considered personal resources and flexibility in coping. Both resiliency and spiritual well-being enable one to predict 23% of variability of flexibility in coping. Cluster analysis revealed that the group of patients with a generally higher level of personal resources was characterised by greater flexibility in all its dimensions. However, stress levels did not modify the relationships between personal resources and flexibility in coping.Conclusions: The results encourage the planning of psychological interventions aimed at the development of personal resources among cancer patients, and warrant further research.

Pet attachment is a phenomenon widely studied in various cultures, but little attention has been devoted to whether it varies across cultures. This topic requires a valid invariant instrument to measure pet attachment. Thus, the aim of this study was cross-cultural examination of the Lexington Attachment to Pets Scale (LAPS). A total of 906 respondents from India, Italy, Poland, and Russia took part in the study. The initial version of LAPS has 23 items and three factors: General attachment, People substitution, and Animal rights/welfare. We expected that (1) LAPS retains its structure across the four countries studied, and that (2) the level of pet attachment varies from country to country. The confirmatory factor analysis did not support the original three-factor structure in all the countries, with specific deviations from the initial structure in each participating country. After many iterations, we decided to investigate a new optimal structure of LAPS. The final one-factor model consisted of eleven items was supported, and this modification was labelled the Brief Lexington Attachment to Pets Scale (B-LAPS). B-LAPS had high omega internal consistency (0.84–0.88), and has demonstrated configural, full metric, and partial scalar measurement invariance across countries. It was shown that the highest score in pet attachment was found in Poland, followed by India, Italy, and Russia. Future research is needed to further validate the external validity of B-LAPS and assess its usefulness in research, animal-assisted therapy, and education.

Background: The results of numerous studies indicate that the nurse profession is burdened with an increased risk of feeling stressed and experiencing professional burnout. Effective coping with stress can protect against professional burnout as well as impact on patient care. These effects may...

Introduction The coping flexibility plays a crucial role in adapting to changing conditions of a situation in group of people struggling with mental and somatic health problems. In Western culture, the coping flexibility is a rare subject of research. Aim and study The purpose of the...

Providing care to a chronically ill person is a stressful situation, which may lead to burden. However, personal and social resources such as social support and spiritual well-being can protect caregivers from these negative consequences. To assess the role of these resources in counteracting fatigue, we examined 55 caregivers of their home mechanically ventilated relatives. The variables were measured with the Perceived Social Support Questionnaire, the Daily Life Fatigue Questionnaire, the Spiritual Index of Well-Being, and a survey. The method of ventilation did not differentiate resources and daily life fatigue in caregivers. Perceived social support was not significantly correlated with fatigue, but spiritual well-being correlated negatively with physical, mental, and social fatigue. Spiritual well-being can partly protect from daily life fatigue in the physical and mental areas.

Background: The flexibility in coping with stress is a new construct in Europe, which allows for a more insightful understanding of individual coping mechanisms, perceived as a process of continuous search for more effective solutions. An individual who is capable of coping with stress in a flexible way, notices the lack of effectiveness of some methods of coping, seeks new solutions, has a wide repertoire of coping strategies, as well as shows reflexivity to see the lack of effectiveness in coping. The profession of a firefighter is characterized by a high level of stress, so people performing this profession should be aware of the remedial actions undertaken and their actual effectiveness. Material and Methods: Altogether, 163 officers of the State Fire Service were examined. The following questionnaires were used in the study: the Polish adaptation of the Impulsiveness- Venturesomeness-Empathy (IVE) Questionnaire, the Coping Flexibility Questionnaire (Polish name: Kwestionariusz elastycznaci w radzeniu sobie ze stresem - KERS-14), and a personal survey. Results: Firefighters with more risky attitudes were found to display greater flexibility in coping, in terms of having a wider repertoire and variability in the applied strategies. In the case of officers with the shortest service period (< 9 years), the lower level of empathy was associated with a higher variability of coping strategies, while in officers with the longest service period (> 14 years), the level of variation in coping strategies correlated positively with the level of empathy. Conclusions: Risk taking propensity is an important predictor of flexibility in coping. The service period is a moderator (at the level of statistical tendency) of the relationship between empathy and flexibility in coping, especially in the field of variability in the use of coping strategies.