Cancer Parenting Program for the Enhancement of the Quality of Life of Patients With Advanced Cancer and Their Children

University of Washington174 enrolled

Overview

This trial examines the usefulness of two educational programs for parents with late-stage cancer who have a 5 - 17 year old child. The programs are designed to enhance the quality of the parent-child relationship and add to the parent's confidence in managing the impact of their cancer on their child. Educational programs may reduce anxiety and depression and improve the well-being and quality of life of parents with advanced cancers and their children. Recruitment occurs nationally via referral to the Fred Hutch/University of Washington Cancer Consortium team.

OUTLINE: Patients are randomized to 1 of 2 groups. GROUP I (ENHANCING CONNECTIONS-PALLIATIVE CARE \[EC-PC\] PROGRAM): Patients receive the 5-session EC-PC program bi-weekly with a patient educator about ways to help them talk to and support their child. GROUP II (CONTROL): Patients receive carefully selected educational booklet that discuss ways to talk about their cancer with their child and a scripted phone call from a trained phone counselor on study.

Study Type

INTERVENTIONAL

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

TRIPLE

Enrollment

174

Conditions

Parenting Parent-Child Relations Cancer

Eligibility

Sex: ALLMin age: 23 YearsMax age: 68 Years

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: * Parents with any type of late-stage, non-curable cancer (determined by TNM stage IV cancer for solid tumors or 2 or more cycles of treatment failure with disease relapse in non-solid tumors) * All therapies are allowable * 23 years (yr.) to 68 yr. Age restriction exists for the patient based on parent having a child ages 5-17 * Patient must have a child (5yr. -17 yr.) living in the home at least 50% of the time and residential with non-ill parent or parent surrogate * Read and write English as one of their languages of choice * Have access to a telephone * Ability to understand and the willingness to sign a written informed consent document. Read and write English as one of their languages of choice Exclusion Criteria: * Patient is in hospice at time of enrollment * Non-ill co-parent does not consent to join study

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Treatment efficacy assessed by parents' mood (CES-D)

Depressed mood will be measured by the 20-item Center for Epidemiological Studies- Depression Scale (CES-D) (Benazon \& Coyne, 2000; Lewis, Fletcher, Cochrane, \& Fann, 2008; Radloff, 1977). The CES-D Scale measures the recent occurrence of symptoms of depression. For each symptom, the respondent indicates the frequency with which that symptom has occurred during the past week, from "rarely or none of the time (less than 1 day)" to "most or all of the time (5-7 days)." This measure has been well- accepted in both ill and non-ill samples. Internal consistency in three samples from the general population has been reported by Radloff (Radloff, 1977) and ranged between .84 to .85. Validity has been well- established, including its link to the broader concept of "distress" in cancer-related research (Benazon \& Coyne, 2000; Coyne et al., 1987; Given et al., 2004) The internal consistency reliability is 0.85 or higher (Benazon \& Coyne, 2000; Coyne et al., 1987; Given et al., 2004).