Association between personality traits and self-care behaviors in patients with gastrointestinal cancer undergoing outpatient chemotherapy

Purpose Practicing self-care behaviors is important for patients with gastrointestinal cancer undergoing outpatient chemotherapy. Knowledge of personality traits may be useful in providing individualized support that can improve self-care behaviors. Therefore, we assessed the association between personality traits and self-care behaviors in these patients. Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted among patients who received intravenous chemotherapy at a designated regional cancer hospital between June 2020 and October 2020. A self-administered survey was conducted among these patients using the Japanese version of the Ten Item Personality Inventory and a 29-item questionnaire to assess self-care behaviors. Association between the scores of the personality traits and frequency of each self-care behavior was analyzed using the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient. Results In total, 53 responses were obtained from 57 participants, of which 52 valid responses were included in the analysis. Openness and conscientiousness were personality traits significantly associated with multiple self-care behaviors. High degree of openness, characterized by the ability to tackle new situations, had a moderately significant positive correlation with adjustment of exercise (ρ = 0.49, pρ = 0.40, pρ = 0.30, p=0.03) and confirmation of inspection results (ρ = 0.39, p