Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Nov 19, 2017
Open Peer Review Period: Nov 20, 2017 - Dec 21, 2017
Date Accepted: Feb 10, 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Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Mobile Breast Cancer e-Support Program for Chinese Women With Breast Cancer Undergoing Chemotherapy (Part 1): Qualitative Study of Women’s Perceptions
Background:
Women with breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy experience difficulty in accessing adequate cancer care in China. Mobile apps have the potential to provide easily accessible support for these women. However, there remains a paucity of randomized controlled trials to evaluate the effectiveness of app-based programs targeting specifically women with breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy. Moreover, women’s perceptions and experiences related to using and interacting within the app-based program have rarely been reported. Therefore, an app-based Breast Cancer e-Support program was developed and evaluated using a randomized controlled trial. Based on the incorporation of Bandura’s self-efficacy and social exchange theory, Breast Cancer e-Support program lasted for 12 weeks covering 4 cycles of chemotherapy and had 4 components: (1) a Learning forum, (2) a Discussion forum, (3) an Ask-the-Expert forum, and (4) a Personal Stories forum.
Objective:
As a part of the randomized controlled trial, the aim of this study was to explore the participants’ perception of Breast Cancer e-Support program, its strengths and weaknesses, and suggestions to improve the program.
Methods:
A descriptive qualitative study was employed. Thirteen women with breast cancer from 2 university-affiliated hospitals in China, who were randomly allocated to the Breast Cancer e-Support program in the randomized controlled trial, were interviewed from November 2016 to February 2017. Purposive sampling was used based on women’s scores of self-efficacy after the completion of the intervention. Inductive content analysis was used to analyze the transcripts, allowing the categories and subcategories to flow from the data.
Results:
The qualitative interviews revealed that participants perceived the Breast Cancer e-Support program to be helpful in enhancing knowledge, improving confidence level, and promoting emotional well-being. Women also identified access to tailored advice from experts and convenience as the benefits of this program. Physical or psychological health status, stigma related with breast cancer, and app instability were mentioned as the challenges to engagement. Suggestions for improvement included adding message reminders to prompt instant communication and search engine to locate information quickly, supplementing more interesting and practical knowledge, updating the information more often, and quickening the responses to women’s questions. The participants recommended the Breast Cancer e-Support program to be incorporated as routine care to support women during chemotherapy.
Conclusions:
This study demonstrates the potential of the Breast Cancer e-Support program to support women during chemotherapy. Future app-based programs should apply a family-centered approach and provide more support on stigma associated with the disease to encourage engagement with the app. Suggestions of improvement regarding the design, content, and operation of the app-based intervention should be addressed in future studies. It is promising to incorporate the Breast Cancer e-Support program into routine care to generalize the benefits.
ClinicalTrial:
Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ACTRN12616000639426; http://www.ANZCTR.org.au/ ACTRN12616000639426.aspx (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6v1n9hGZq)
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.