Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Cancer
Date Submitted: Jun 26, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Jun 29, 2018 - Jul 13, 2018
Date Accepted: Dec 29, 2018
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Impact of a Mobilized Stress Management Program (Pep-Pal) for Caregivers of Oncology Patients: Mixed-Methods Study
Background:
Caregivers of patients with advanced diseases are known to have high levels of distress, including depression and anxiety. Recent research has focused on recognizing caregivers in need of psychosocial support to help them manage their distress. Evidenced-based technological interventions have the potential to aid caregivers in managing distress.
Objective:
The objective of our study was to describe caregiver perceptions of the usability and acceptability, and their suggestions for future adaptations, of a mobilized psychoeducation and skills-based intervention.
Methods:
This study was a part of a larger trial of a mobilized psychoeducation and skills-based intervention (Psychoeducation and Skills-Based Mobilized Intervention [Pep-Pal]) for caregivers of patients with advanced illness. This substudy used a mixed-methods analysis of quantitative data from all 26 intervention participants and qualitative data from 14 intervention caregivers who completed the Pep-Pal intervention. The qualitative semistructured individual interviews, which we conducted within the first 4 weeks after participants completed the intervention, assessed the acceptability and usability of Pep-Pal. Additionally, the qualitative interviews provided contextual evidence of how the intervention was helpful to interviewees in unanticipated ways. We conducted applied thematic analysis via independent review of transcripts to extract salient themes.
Results:
Overall, caregivers of patients with advanced cancer deemed Pep-Pal to be acceptable in all Web-based sessions except for Improving Intimacy. Caregivers perceived the program to be of use across the areas they needed and in others that they had not anticipated. Caregiver recommendations of key changes for the program were to include more variety in caregiver actors in sessions, change the title of Improving Intimacy to Improving Relationships, provide an audio-only option in addition to video, and change the format of the mobilized website program to a stand-alone mobile app.
Conclusions:
The valuable feedback in key areas from individual interviews will be integrated into the final version of Pep-Pal that will be tested in a fully powered randomized clinical trial.
ClinicalTrial:
ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03002896; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03002896 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/76eThwaei)
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.