Men´s utilization of control strategies and spousal support after prostatectomy: Managing autonomy in the face of postoperative morbidities

根治性膀胱切除术（RP）后，术后发病率（例如，尿失禁）对患者的自主性和健康提出了新的挑战。为了应对这些挑战，生命周期控制理论认为，个体通过调整目标和使用控制策略来实现目标，从而积极调节自己的发展。通过动员外部帮助，这种控制策略的使用可以扩展到包括制定的社会支持的动态。本研究的目的是调查患者在控制策略使用、配偶支持利用以及与婚姻相关的目标（“防线”）的长期变化方面的短期和长期变化。并探讨了这些因素对患者及其配偶对患者术后并发症的即时和长期适应的潜在保护作用。将招募总共206名RP患者及其伴侣参与一项前瞻性、日记和问卷调查相结合的研究，研究时间约为8个月的围手术期。研究病人的即时反应，术后发病率与日记的方法和他们的假设一般的重新调整，恢复的进展，将促进新的见解，病人的自我调节功能的动态和他们对配偶的福祉和能力的影响，以产生支持。

Following radical prostatectomy (RP), postoperative morbidities (e.g., urinary incontinence) place new challenges upon patients’ autonomy and well-being. To meet these challenges, the Life-Span Theory of Control suggests that individuals actively regulate their development by adjusting goals and by using control strategies for goal attainment. By mobilization of external help, such control-strategy use can be extended to incorporate dynamics of enacted social support. Aims of this study are the investigation of patients’ short- and longer-term changes in control- strategy use, utilization of spousal support, and long-term changes in autonomy-related goals (“Lines of Defense”). Also, these factors’ potential protective functions for patients’ and their spouses’ immediate and long-term adaptation to patients’ postoperative morbidities are studied. A total of 206 RP patients and their partners will be recruited for participation in a prospective, combined diary and questionnaire study spanning about 8 months perisurgery. Studying patients’ immediate responses to postoperative morbidity with a diary approach and their assumed general readjustment as convalescence progresses will promote new insights into the dynamics of patients’ self-regulative functioning and their influence on spouses’ well being and capacity to yield support.