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“It just made me feel better”: qualitative examination of the implementation of a novel virtual psychosocial support program for adolescents with cancer

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Abstract

Purpose

Adolescents with cancer routinely report feelings of isolation and exclusion, including from medical decision-making. To address this problem and support adolescents, we designed and implemented the novel, virtual, weekly Teens4Teens peer support group and patient education program. We examined the views of participating adolescents, program guest speakers, and program moderators as they pertained to the need for the program, its feasibility, acceptability, and perceived impact.

Methods

We recruited all available adolescents, moderators, and guest speakers who participated in Teens4Teens to take part in audio-recorded, semi-structured interviews. Interviews were transcribed, coded, and analyzed using thematic analysis.

Results

We conducted 21 interviews across participant groups. We identified four broad themes: pathways into the Teen4Teens program, Teens4Teens implementation capacity, perspectives of the positive impact of Teens4Teens, and suggestions to improve Teens4Teens. These themes described a perceived need for adolescent-centered psychosocial programming in pediatric cancer care, provided lessons on how best to build and apply such a program, and highlighted the value of the program for both adolescents’ and clinicians’ acceptability, feasibility, and perceived utility.

Conclusion

Adolescents, guest speakers, and moderators valued Teens4Teens and made suggestions to improve capacity to routinely implement the program. Adolescent-tailored psychosocial programming, such as Teens4Teens, is positioned to be integrated into clinical care with relative ease and may serve to improve the cancer care experience of adolescents and their families. This study has potential to provide researchers and clinicians with valuable information about the content, design, and delivery of virtual peer support programming for adolescents with cancer.

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Data availability

Data from this study is available (in accordance with institutional policies) from the corresponding author upon request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our moderator, guest speaker, and adolescent participants for kindly taking the time to share their experiences and perceptions related to the Teens4Teens program. We would also like to thank the Garron Family Cancer Centre at the Hospital for Sick Children for helping support this program.

Funding

We acknowledge the financial support of the Garron Family Cancer Centre at the Hospital for Sick Children.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto, 155 College St, Toronto, ON, M5T 1P8, Canada

    A. Kilfoy & L. A. Jibb

  2. Division of Hematology and Oncology, Hospital for Sick Children, 170 Elizabeth St, Toronto, ON, M5G 1E8, Canada

    A. Kilfoy, T. Masama, S. Alexander & L. A. Jibb

  3. Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia, 317-2194 Health Sciences Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z3, Canada

    W. Liu

  4. Child Health Evaluative Sciences, Hospital for Sick Children, 686 Bay Street, Toronto, ON, M5G 0A4, Canada

    A. Kilfoy, E. Hashemi, M. Pereira & L. A. Jibb

  5. Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, ON, Hamilton, L8S 4L8, Canada

    P. Panesar

  6. Department of Supportive Care, University Health Network, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, 610 University Ave, Toronto, ON, M6G 2C4, Canada

    C. Korenblum

  7. Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, 1 King’s College Cir, ON, Toronto, M5S 1A8, Canada

    S. Alexander & C. Korenblum

  8. Division of Adolescent Medicine, Hospital for Sick Children, 170 Elizabeth St, Toronto, ON, M5G 1E8, Canada

    C. Korenblum

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Contributions

Lindsay Jibb, Chana Korenblum, and Sarah Alexander conceptualized the study and subsequent design. Material preparation and data collection were performed by Alicia Kilfoy, Tatenda Masama, and Elham Hashemi. Preliminary data analysis was performed by Alicia Kilfoy, Tatenda Masama, Elham Hashemi, Myra Pereira, and William Liu. All authors met to review analytical decisions and arbitrate discrepancies. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Alicia Kilfoy and Prabdeep Panesar and revised by all authors. All authors read and approved of the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to L. A. Jibb.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethics approval

This study received ethics approval from the institutional review board at the Hospital for Sick Children (#1000075632), and all procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Consent to participate

All moderators, guest speakers, and adolescent participants provided informed consent to participate before any involvement in this study.

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflict of interest to disclose.

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Korenblum C and Jibb LA are co-last authors.

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Kilfoy, A., Panesar, P., Hashemi, E. et al. “It just made me feel better”: qualitative examination of the implementation of a novel virtual psychosocial support program for adolescents with cancer. Support Care Cancer 31, 610 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-023-08054-1

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