Zhang T, Liang HX, Cao LD, Hu SS. Clinical nursing pathways and psychological care in early liver cancer surgery patients: Effects on anxiety, depression, and pain. World J Psychiatry 2026; 16(5): 114680 [DOI: 10.5498/wjp.v16.i5.114680]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Shuang-Shuang Hu, Department of General Surgery, Cancer Center, Division of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery, Zhejiang Provincial People’s Hospital, The Affiliated People’s Hospital, Hangzhou Medical College, No. 158 Shangtang Road, Gongshu District, Hangzhou 310014, Zhejiang Province, China. 19906618227@163.com
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Psychology
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Retrospective Study
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This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
May 19, 2026 (publication date) through May 6, 2026
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World Journal of Psychiatry
ISSN
2220-3206
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Baishideng Publishing Group Inc, 7041 Koll Center Parkway, Suite 160, Pleasanton, CA 94566, USA
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Zhang T, Liang HX, Cao LD, Hu SS. Clinical nursing pathways and psychological care in early liver cancer surgery patients: Effects on anxiety, depression, and pain. World J Psychiatry 2026; 16(5): 114680 [DOI: 10.5498/wjp.v16.i5.114680]
World J Psychiatry. May 19, 2026; 16(5): 114680 Published online May 19, 2026. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v16.i5.114680
Clinical nursing pathways and psychological care in early liver cancer surgery patients: Effects on anxiety, depression, and pain
Ting Zhang, Hong-Xia Liang, Li-Dong Cao, Shuang-Shuang Hu
Ting Zhang, Hong-Xia Liang, Li-Dong Cao, Shuang-Shuang Hu, Department of General Surgery, Cancer Center, Division of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery, Zhejiang Provincial People’s Hospital, The Affiliated People’s Hospital, Hangzhou Medical College, Hangzhou 310014, Zhejiang Province, China
Ting Zhang, Hong-Xia Liang, Shuang-Shuang Hu, Department of Nursing, Zhejiang Provincial People’s Hospital, The Affiliated People’s Hospital, Hangzhou Medical College, Hangzhou 310014, Zhejiang Province, China
Co-first authors: Ting Zhang and Hong-Xia Liang.
Author contributions: Zhang T and Hu SS designed the study and were involved in the data acquisition and writing of this article; Liang HX and Cao LD contributed to the analysis of the manuscript; and all authors have read and approved the final manuscript; Zhang T and Liang HX have made crucial and indispensable contributions towards the completion of the project and thus qualified as the co-first authors of the paper.
Supported by Hangzhou Medical College, Zhejiang Provincial Department of Education General Scientific Research Project, No. Y202352666.
Institutional review board statement: This study was approved by the Ethic Committee of Zhejiang Provincial People's Hospital.
Informed consent statement: Patients were not required to give informed consent to the study because the analysis used anonymous clinical data that were obtained after each patient agreed to treatment by written consent.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors who have taken part in this study have nothing to disclose.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Corresponding author: Shuang-Shuang Hu, Department of General Surgery, Cancer Center, Division of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery, Zhejiang Provincial People’s Hospital, The Affiliated People’s Hospital, Hangzhou Medical College, No. 158 Shangtang Road, Gongshu District, Hangzhou 310014, Zhejiang Province, China. 19906618227@163.com
Received: December 2, 2025 Revised: December 30, 2025 Accepted: February 2, 2026 Published online: May 19, 2026 Processing time: 148 Days and 0 Hours
Abstract
BACKGROUND
Patients with early liver cancer (eLC) commonly experience substantial psychological burden during treatment. High-quality nursing support provision may alleviate such stress.
AIM
To check how the clinical nursing pathway (CNP) + psychological nursing impacts anxiety, depression, and pain in individuals with eLC surgery.
METHODS
Total 230 patients with eLC surgery were allocated to the control (routine nursing) and observation (CNP + psychological nursing) groups. We conducted comparative analyses for the following: Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7); Depression Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9); resilience Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC); pain Numeric Rating Scale (NRS) and Short-Form McGill Pain Questionnaire (SF-MPQ-2); cancer-related fatigue (CRF); Cancer Fatigue Scale; treatment cooperation; nursing satisfaction.
RESULTS
Postcare, the scores (points) of the GAD-7 [8.00 (5.00-10.00) vs 10.00 (8.00-12.75)], PHQ-9 [8.00 (6.00-11.00) vs 13.00 (11.00-16.00)], NRS [4.00 (3.00-5.00) vs 4.50 (3.00-5.75)], and SF-MPQ-2 (35.70 ± 5.22 vs 39.63 ± 5.96) scales, as well as the proportion of moderate (34.43% vs 61.11%) and severe (0.82% vs 5.56%) CRF patients, were notably lower in the observation group than in controls. Regarding the CD-RISC scores (points), the observation group scored higher in tenacity [34.00 (31.00-38.00) vs 28.00 (26.00-31.00)], strength [22.00 (18.75-25.00) vs 18.00 (16.00-21.00)], and optimism [10.00 (8.00-12.00) vs 7.00 (5.00-9.00)] domains; the number of patients with absent (15.57% vs 4.63%) or mild (49.18% vs 28.70%) CRF was also greater in the observation cohort, along with higher treatment compliance (95.08% vs 75.00%) and nursing satisfaction (95.08% vs 78.70%).
CONCLUSION
The above results demonstrate the effectiveness of CNP plus psychological nursing in mitigating anxiety, depression, and pain in patients surgically treated for eLC.
Core Tip: Conventional care is unable to meet the detailed health needs and psychological support requirements of perioperative patients. This study proposed applying clinical nursing pathways and psychological nursing interventions for patients undergoing early liver cancer (eLC) surgery. This nursing model had significant clinical advantages over conventional nursing, as it significantly alleviated patients’ negative emotions, pain, and cancer-related fatigue and exerted a significant improvement effect on patients’ psychological resilience, treatment compliance, and nursing satisfaction. These results provide a better nursing model choice for patients undergoing eLC surgery.
