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Efficacy of a support intervention designed to improve parents’ communication with children dealing with parental cancer: a randomized pilot trial

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Abstract

Objective

Cancer-related communication is critical for parents’ and children’s adaptation to the disease. This randomized pilot study was conducted to test the feasibility, acceptability, and efficacy of a 4-session intervention designed to improve parents’ communication.

Methods

A 4-session intervention was developed to aid parents to support their children through more open/adapted communication. Sixty-six parents were assigned randomly to informational booklet with and without 4-session support intervention arms. Parents’ communication self-efficacy, communication behaviors, communication difficulties, knowledge about age-appropriate communication, theoretical knowledge about concerns of children, parenting concerns, and distress were assessed by questionnaires at baseline and post-interventions. Multivariate analyses of variance were performed to compare data between and within groups over time.

Results

The intervention attrition rate was 6%. Data from 60 participants were included in analyses. Parents in the informational booklet with 4-session support group increased their communication self-efficacy (F = 4.5, p = 0.04), reduced communication difficulties (F = 4.0, p = 0.05), and increased their knowledge about how to communicate (F = 4.8, p = 0.03).

Conclusion

The results indicate that the 4-session intervention is acceptable, and shows preliminary evidence of efficacy.

Practice implications

A short support intervention associated with an informational booklet may be useful for parents wishing to improve their communication with their children.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

Not applicable.

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Funding

This project was supported by Les Amis de l’Institut Bordet and the Thierry Maricq & Véronique Detournay funds (managed by the King Baudouin Foundation; budget code J1990060).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut Jules Bordet, Clinique de Psycho-Oncologie, Rue Meylemeersch, 90, 1070, Anderlecht, Brussels, Belgium

    Aurore Liénard, Salomé Lamal, Isabelle Merckaert & Darius Razavi

  2. Université Libre de Bruxelles, Unité de Recherche en Psychosomatique et Psycho-Oncologie, 50 Avenue Franklin Roosevelt, Brussels, Belgium

    Aurore Liénard, Salomé Lamal, Isabelle Merckaert & Darius Razavi

Authors
  1. Aurore Liénard
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  2. Salomé Lamal
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  4. Darius Razavi
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Contributions

Conceptualization: AL, DR, and IM; methodology: AL, DR, and IM; investigation: AL and SL; data curation: AL, SL, DR, and IM; formal analysis: SL; validation: DR; writing — original draft: AL, SL, DR, and IM; writing — review and editing: AL, SL, DR, and IM; visualization: AL and SL; supervision: AL and DR; project administration: AL and DR; funding acquisition: AL, DR, and IM.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Aurore Liénard.

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval

All study procedures were approved by the Ethics Committee of Jules Bordet Institute and Erasme Hospital (B079201732236; CE2681). The study protocol has been registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT03905278).

Consent to participate

Participants in the study signed an informed consent after reading an information letter.

Consent for publication

The signed consent documents included a sentence stating that “the coded data may be used for the following purposes […] to publish the anonymized results of the study in scientific articles […].”

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Aurore Liénard and Salomé Lamal should be considered as co-first authors.

Isabelle Merckaert and Darius Razavi should be considered as co-last authors.

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Liénard, A., Lamal, S., Merckaert, I. et al. Efficacy of a support intervention designed to improve parents’ communication with children dealing with parental cancer: a randomized pilot trial. Support Care Cancer 30, 9823–9832 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-022-07380-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-022-07380-0

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