A self-efficacy enhancing intervention for pulmonary rehabilitation based on motivational interviewing for postoperative lung cancers patients: modeling and randomized exploratory trial

The objective of this study was to evaluate the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a self-efficacy enhancing intervention designed for pulmonary rehabilitation based on motivational interviewing (MI) for postsurgical non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. This study was a 2-arm pilot randomized controlled trial and was conducted in two cardiothoracic surgery departments, a tertiary hospital in Fuzhou, China. 28 postsurgical NSCLC patients were randomized to a 3 month (6 session) self-efficacy enhancing intervention based on MI or usual care (UC). Data were measured at baseline and after intervention. The MI based self-efficacy enhancing intervention group was superior to the UC group for reducing anxiety and depression, improving self-efficacy, quality of life, confrontational coping, social support and functional capacity. However, no statistically significant difference was observed in subjective well-being, posttraumatic growth, body mass index and pulmonary function between the two groups. This pilot study demonstrated the feasibility of MI based self-efficacy enhancing intervention for postsurgical NSCLC patients. A larger randomized trial would demonstrate a more rigorous test of efficacy.