Conectar
To explore how classmate ‘ambassadors’ experienced and engaged in social interaction while visiting a hospitalised peer undergoing cancer treatment.
A phenomenological-hermeneutic inspired exploratory study.
Using on-the-go semi-structured interviews and participant observations from January to December 2023 in Denmark, we included 27 school-aged ambassadors aged 6–18 years old; 18 participated in pre- and post-visit interviews, while all 27 took part in observations during 19 visits. Van Manen's phenomenological-hermeneutic approach guided thematic analysis.
Six themes emerged: (1) visiting the hospital, (2) being supportive, (3) aligning expectations, (4) being unsure, (5) safeguarding the relationship and (6) leaving the hospital. Ambassadors were eager to visit, seeking to be good friends by offering social, emotional and physical support. They were mindful of the information shared to prevent the hospitalised children from feeling excluded. Social interactions often involved allowing the hospitalised children to take on decision-making roles, recognising their well-being as a priority.
Ambassadors found hospital visits meaningful as they wanted to make a difference and sought to support their hospitalised peers. Their role was shaped by their understanding of friendship and the disease trajectory. Social interactions were largely conflict-free due to the pre-visit alignment of expectations.
Classmates found visits meaningful and wished to make a difference. Healthcare professionals should facilitate visits to strengthen social connections between the hospitalised child and their surroundings as a part of family-centred care within paediatric oncology.
Problem: Cancer treatment often causes social disruption for children with cancer, making the transition to everyday life more difficult post-treatment.
Classmates were eager to visit hospitalised peers, demonstrating awareness of cancer and a desire to support them.
Facilitating classmate visits may enhance classmates' understanding of cancer and aid hospitalised children's reintegration into everyday life.
The COREQ checklist was used.
Ambassadors contributed to designing the interview guides.
Enhances knowledge of supporting social relationships between hospitalised children and their classmates during cancer treatment. However, the RESPECT study is rooted in the Danish cultural context, where it is common to attend local volunteer activities after school. Although getting diagnosed with a life-threatening illness such as cancer may be difficult to talk about with peers and even a taboo in some countries, we do expect that interventions with structured possibilities for social interactions are an important step towards normalisation of communicating about childhood cancer.
Communication is a professional competence that all paediatric healthcare professionals must learn and maintain to provide age and developmentally appropriate care. Child-centred communication encourages direct communication with children and adolescents, incorporating the use of play as a communicative strategy. Still, many paediatric healthcare professionals receive little or no formal training in communication and play. A critical barrier to communication training is the limited possibilities for healthcare professionals to take time from their clinical duties. Moreover, few randomised controlled trials have evaluated educational programmes on communication and play for paediatric healthcare professionals, and existing programmes vary significantly in design and duration. This study aims to compare the effects of a 45-min and a 3-hour educational intervention for healthcare professionals on age-appropriate communication and the use of play in clinical paediatric practice.
We will describe a single-centre, randomised, controlled, two-arm, non-inferiority trial. We will recruit 150 healthcare professionals with different professional backgrounds who will be randomised to one of two arms: a 45-min or 3-hour educational intervention on communication and play in paediatric clinical practice. The primary outcome will be their self-efficacy in patient-centredness at 12-week post-intervention, while secondary outcomes will be self-efficacy immediately after the intervention, motivation to engage in the educational activity, cognitive load, self-evaluated knowledge, satisfaction and the impact on individual practice and training needs. Data will be collected through questionnaires at baseline, immediately after the intervention, and 12 weeks post-intervention and will be analysed using linear mixed models with random effects to account for clustering and within-subject correlation.
The Danish Data Protection Agency approved the study (P-2020–1144), which will be conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Findings will be published in a peer-reviewed open-access scientific journal and presented at international conferences.
NCT06859632 (ClinicalTrials.gov).
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