Informed consent practices in healthcare are a fundamental element of patient-centred care; however, the traditional written description of the medical procedure for obtaining informed consent seems to have several limitations. Aim: This research aimed to evaluate the effects of an alternative method of obtaining informed consent, based on a short informative video for patients waiting to undergo a coronary angiography procedure in Italy.

The study involved 40 participants, 28 males and 12 females (mean age: 68.55, SD = 13.03), equally divided into two groups, one that received video informed consent and the other the traditional written one. Each group was asked to fill out two questionnaires, one created ad hoc by the authors to measure the level of understanding of the information provided and the perception of usefulness of informed consent, and the other the DASS-21 scale, able to assess anxiety, depression and stress levels.

Comparing the results of the two groups showed that informed consent via video enabled participants to better understand the information provided, as well as feel more confident in their subjective understanding of it, while perceiving informed consent via video as more useful than the traditional one. Video informed consent did not lead to higher levels of anxiety, depression, or stress among participants.

it can be hypothesized that video formats could represent a more useful and understandable alternative to traditional informed consent in the coronary angiography procedure sector.

The objectives of this study were to evaluate, in the Italian cultural context, breast cancer patients’ main meaning themes related to the experience of the disease, on the one side, and to be part of an existentially oriented group intervention, on the other.

A short reorientation-existential (RET) group intervention, structured by using some tools and background from cognitive analytic therapy (CAT) and based on the meaning-centered psychotherapy (MCP) existential framework, was delivered to 29 breast cancer patients. The sessions were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim, with the narratives from reflective exercises (meaning of the journey cancer, meaning of the journey of intervention) uploaded to computer software NVivo 11. Analysis of the transcripts emerged from reflective exercises on the personal meaning of cancer and the letters of meaning (goodbye letter) written by the patients to express the meaning of their experience in the group was conducted through the interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) framework.

Four superordinate themes were identified in the exercise meaning of the experience of cancer, namely “sense of stigma and loneliness (the foreigner),” “guilt (unjust guilt and anticipatory guilt),” “reconsidering one's own life and nostalgia,” and “rebirth (a new life, life after life).” Three superordinate themes were found in the meaning of the group experience in the letters, namely “togetherness and gratitude,” “legacy,” and “acceptance.”

The study confirmed that a short group intervention, based on the existentially oriented framework and delivered in a public clinical healthcare setting, was enriched by focusing on the personal meaning of cancer. Some themes, such as loneliness, nostalgia, and rebirth, emerged during reflection giving, in written letters to participants, the sense of the group therapeutic experience.

This paper presents a two-phase cross-sectional study aimed at examining the possible mitigating role of perceived meaning of life and representation of death on psychological distress, anxiety, and depression.

The first phase involved 219 healthy participants, while the second encompassed 30 cancer patients. Each participant completed the Personal Meaning Profile (PMP), the Testoni Death Representation Scale (TDRS), the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), and the Distress Thermometer (DT). The primary analyses comprised (1) correlation analyses between the overall scores of each of the instruments and (2) path analysis to assess the indirect effect of the PMP on DT score through anxiety and depression as determined by the HADS.

The path analysis showed that the PMP was inversely correlated with depression and anxiety, which, in turn, mediated the effect on distress. Inverse correlations were found between several dimensions of the PMP, the DT, and the HADS–Anxiety and HADS–Depression subscales, in both healthy participants and cancer patients. Religious orientation (faith in God) was related to a stronger sense of meaning in life and the ontological representation of death as a passage, rather than annihilation.

Our findings support the hypothesis that participants who represent death as a passage and have a strong perception of the meaning of life tend to report lower levels of distress, anxiety, and depression. We recommend that perceived meaning of life and representation of death be more specifically examined in the cancer and palliative care settings.