Telephone-Based Educational Intervention in Improving Communication Between Patients With Stage 0-III Cancer and Their Children

University of Washington

Status

Completed

Conditions

Breast Cancer

Malignant Neoplasm

Melanoma

Colon Cancer

Lymphoma

Leukemia

Cervical Cancer

Rectal Cancer

Treatments

Behavioral: telephone-based intervention

Other: educational intervention

Other: questionnaire administration

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

NIH

Identifiers

NCT02129049

9095 (Other Identifier)

R03CA178488 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

P30CA015704 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

NCI-2014-00928 (Registry Identifier)

Details and patient eligibility

About

This pilot clinical trial studies the feasibility of a telephone-based educational intervention in improving communication between patients with stage 0-III cancer and their children. An educational program delivered by telephone may help parents talk with their school-age child about their cancer.

Full description

PRIMARY OBJECTIVES:

I. Test the feasibility of the recruitment and study protocol.

II. Evaluate the short-term impact of the program on the diagnosed parents' and the parent's perceptions of their children's adjustment using a within group design (pre-posttest design).

III. To compare outcomes from the telephone-delivered program with outcomes obtained from the in-person program (between group design).

OUTLINE:

Participants complete the Enhancing Connections Telephone Program comprising 5, 1 hour educational telephone sessions over 3 months. During session 1, parents receive help defining the child's experience with the cancer as distinct from their own and ways to manage their own cancer-related emotions so that they do not emotionally flood the child. During session 2, parents receive assistance with developing skills to deeply listen and attend to the child's thoughts and feelings, complementing the parent's tendency to be a teacher, not a deep listener, of the child's thoughts, concerns, worries or understandings. During session 3, parents receive additional communication and parenting skills enabling them to initiate difficult cancer-related conversations and also interact with an upset child or one who is not forthcoming. During session 4, parents receive help focusing on and non-judgmentally interpreting the child's ways of coping with the cancer. It includes exercises that assist the parent to relinquish negative assumptions about the child's behavior related to the parent's cancer. Concurrently the session offers the ill parent ways to elicit their child's report of what the parent can do to assist the child cope with the child's cancer-related pressures. During session 5, parents focus on the gains they made in prior sessions and what they have accomplished, in their own words, in parenting their child about the cancer. The session also assists the ill parent to identify available resources that can be used after program completion to maintain the parent's newly acquired gains from the program.

Enrollment

35 patients

Sex

All

Ages

18+ years old

Volunteers

No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

Parents will be eligible if they have an initial diagnosis of non-metastatic cancer of any type (stage 0-3), including melanoma, colorectal, cervical, leukemia, lymphoma or breast cancer within the past 7 months
Read and write English among their languages of choice
Have ready access to a telephone
Have a child 5-12 years old living at home who has been told their parent's cancer diagnosis
The child is living at home and does not have learning challenges
No prior malignancy is allowed except for adequately treated basal (or squamous cell) skin cancer