Currently submitted to: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Oct 30, 2025
Open Peer Review Period: Oct 30, 2025 - Dec 25, 2025
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
NOTE: This is an unreviewed Preprint
Warning: This is a unreviewed preprint (What is a preprint?). Readers are warned that the document has not been peer-reviewed by expert/patient reviewers or an academic editor, may contain misleading claims, and is likely to undergo changes before final publication, if accepted, or may have been rejected/withdrawn (a note "no longer under consideration" will appear above).
Peer review me: Readers with interest and expertise are encouraged to sign up as peer-reviewer, if the paper is within an open peer-review period (in this case, a "Peer Review Me" button to sign up as reviewer is displayed above). All preprints currently open for review are listed here. Outside of the formal open peer-review period we encourage you to tweet about the preprint.
Citation: Please cite this preprint only for review purposes or for grant applications and CVs (if you are the author).
Final version: If our system detects a final peer-reviewed "version of record" (VoR) published in any journal, a link to that VoR will appear below. Readers are then encourage to cite the VoR instead of this preprint.
Settings: If you are the author, you can login and change the preprint display settings, but the preprint URL/DOI is supposed to be stable and citable, so it should not be removed once posted.
Submit: To post your own preprint, simply submit to any JMIR journal, and choose the appropriate settings to expose your submitted version as preprint.
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
REalist COllaborative eVAluation of a work disability prevention programme for breast cancer survivors: Protocol of the RECOVA-FASTRACS realist evaluation
ABSTRACT
Background:
Women with breast cancer face many barriers to return to work (RTW) after their treatment. The FAcilitating and SusTain the Return to work After breast Cancer (FASTRACS) intervention aims to facilitate and sustain functional RTW. The main objective of the RECOVA-FASTRACS study is to evaluate the processes of the using a realist approach that analyses what works, how, for whom and under what circumstances.
Methods:
The RECOVA-FASTRACS study uses a mixed-methods design to assess the implementation, context, and impact mechanisms of the FASTRACS intervention. The qualitative analysis will include two main components: a trajectory analysis and a focus group assessment. The trajectory analysis will examine the experience of women who participated in the intervention and key individuals involved in their RTW process. We will use semi-structured interviews according to the multiple-case study method. Additionally, to explore organisational and professional practices, focus groups will be conducted with professionals who deliver the intervention. To analyse the trajectories, embedded and iterative integration will combine the qualitative findings, with relevant quantitative data from the FASTRACS randomised controlled trial for five domains (i.e. personal situation, professional situation, return to work, care pathway, intervention tool use and perceived usefulness). Discussion: Our mixed-methods realist evaluation will provide a detailed analysis of the intervention processes, helping to identify impact mechanisms within specific contexts. This approach is meant to ensure a more informed and realist deployment of the intervention by professionals following the study.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
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.