Feasibility Testing and Evaluation of an Online Toolkit for Male Spouses of Women With Breast Cancer

University of Alberta

Status and phase: Completed; Phase 3

Conditions: Breast Cancer

Treatments: Behavioral: Male Spouse Transition Toolkit

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02058615

25908

Details and patient eligibility

About

Male partners of women with breast cancer experience distress, so we want to develop a way to support them so they, in turn, can care for their wives. The purpose is to pilot test an online male spouse transition toolkit (MaTT) that the research team has developed. The specific aims are to: a) evaluate the Toolkit for ease of use, acceptability, and feasibility, and; b) collect preliminary data to determine potential effectiveness of the Toolkit in increasing hope, general self-efficacy and quality of life, and its potential effectiveness in decreasing guilt scores for male partners of women with breast cancer (stages 1-3).

Enrollment: 57 patients

Sex: Male

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• male
• 18 years of age or older
• living with a spouse who has breast cancer (Stage 1, 2, or 3)
• English speaking.

Exclusion criteria

• persons who are non-autonomous adults
• cognitively impaired as determined by the Registered Nurse (RN) researcher
• unable to participate, in the opinion of the RN researcher
• non-English speaking
• does not have a spouse who is diagnosed with having breast cancer (State 1, 2, or 3)

Trial design

Primary purpose: Supportive Care

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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57 participants in 2 patient groups

Male Spouse Transition Toolkit

Experimental group

Description:

All participants in this group will be given access to the Male Spouse Transition Toolkit (MaTT). MaTT is a website based application that is designed to help male spouses of women with breast cancer to increase their awareness of the transitions and experiences they have as a husband and caregiver as well as to stay organized and seek help and resources as needed. To do so it consists of six sections: about me; common changes to expect; frequently asked questions; resources; calendar; and, important health information. These sections contain activities and exercises, as well as fillable templates (i.e., resources, calendar) that users can download at their convenience, from their home computer, tablet, or smart phone. They will be asked to use the MaTT for one month.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Male Spouse Transition Toolkit

Usual Care

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants in this group will not receive access to the Male Spouse Transition Toolkit, and thus will not receive an intervention. Data collection for outcome variables will be the same as the participants in the experimental arm.