Abstract
To evaluate the impact of a patient-centered symposium as an educational intervention on a broad population of cancer patients. We developed a comprehensive patient symposium. Through voluntary questionnaires, we studied the impact of this cancer symposium on quality of life, cancer-specific knowledge, and symptom management among cancer patients. Symposium attendees were provided surveys prior to and 3 months following the educational intervention. Surveys included (1) EORTC-QLQ-C30; (2) disease understanding tool developed for this conference; (3) validated disease-specific questionnaires. Changes over time were assessed using McNemar's tests and paired t-tests for categorical and continuous variables, respectively. A total of 158 attendees completed the pre-convention survey. Most respondents reported at least “quite a bit” of understanding regarding treatment options, screening modalities, symptomatology, and cancer-related side effects. Attendees endorsed the least understanding of disease-related stress, risk factors, fatigue management, and legal issues related to disease/treatment. At 3 months, there was improvement in understanding (12 of 14 areas of self-reported knowledge especially regarding nutrition, and stress/fatigue management). However, no significant change was seen in QLQ-C30 functioning, fatigue, pain, or insomnia. A patient symposium, as an educational intervention improves a solid knowledge base amongst attendees regarding their disease, increases knowledge in symptom management, but may be insufficient to impact QoL as a single intervention.
Highlights
Cancer survivorship demonstrates unmet needs and educational deficits
We developed a comprehensive patient symposium (Living with Cancer [LWC]: A Mayo Clinic Symposium for Patients and Loved Ones) with 8 h of general sessions and a 4 h disease-specific breakout
We studied the impact of this cancer symposium on quality of life, cancer-specific knowledge, and symptom management among cancer patients
Summary
Cancer survivorship demonstrates unmet needs and educational deficits. A growing field of research in oncologic care [1] and health care in general [2] is a focus on quality of life and survivorship. Increased survival is balanced with long-term sequela of treatment, chronic symptom burden, recurrence monitoring, and interrelationship struggles [3, 4]. These issues impact individuals during the acute phase of diagnosis and treatment, but can evolve or persist in the long-term phase of survivorship [5, 6]. We developed a comprehensive patient symposium (Living with Cancer [LWC]: A Mayo Clinic Symposium for Patients and Loved Ones) with 8 h of general sessions (covering nutrition exercise, cancer inheritance, financial and legal challenges, communication, survivorship, and cancer therapy) and a 4 h disease-specific breakout
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