Introduction:

Breast cancer is one of the most frequent malignant tumors and one of the leading causes of cancer death in women in the world.

Objective:

To describe the coping skills and adaptation of women with breast cancer and undergoing treatment in Hematooncologos SA city of Cali.

Methods:

Cross-sectional descriptive study, developed during the months of September 2013 and February 2014, included 175 women. Measuring the Scale tool Process Coping and Adaptation of Callista Roy (Ecaps) translated and validated for Colombia was used for data collection. For data analysis was done using univariate statistics.

Results:

The age of participants ranged from 30 to 84 years. Among the types of treatment they received it was observed that 74.3 % had performed surgery, 53 % radiotherapy, 86 % chemotherapy. Coping capacity and adaptation was high in 173 (98.9 %) and low in 2 (1.1 %).

Conclusions:

Coping and adaptation strategies used by women with breast cancer were high in personal behaviors, physical reactions given in 1-2-3 and low factors in the strategies used to bring the situation on factors 4 and 5. However several strategies used simultaneously.

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