The Development and Assessment of a Novel e-Education Tool to Enhance the Patient Experience

Women with gynaecological cancers have unique informational needs regarding their disease and treatments options. For endometrial cancer patients, the standard of care includes vaginal vault brachytherapy where radioactive sources are temporary placed into a cylinder which is placed into the vagina. The current standard of care is to provide women with verbal and written educational materials. Despite these educational attempts many women still arrive to their first treatment with high levels of anxiety and distress. The overall objective of this work was to develop a tailored education intervention for women with endometrial cancer undergoing vaginal vault brachytherapy and assess the impact of this new tool on this patient population. Women with confirmed endometrial cancer who were treated with vaginal vault brachytherapy alone were approached to participate in this prospective cohort study. The new e-education tool was developed and evaluated based on a preliminary needs assessment. Baseline anxiety scores were obtained utilizing the validated HADs survey, prior to, during and post brachytherapy treatment. The non-validated needs survey was administered at the end of treatment. The survey was comprised of 3 domains: the first addresses informational content regarding treatment, second addresses delivery of the information, and the third focuses on format of the information. The new e-education tool was then developed. An acceptability and usefulness survey was administered at the end of brachytherapy to assess the new education tool. Again, anxiety levels were measured utilizing the HADs survey. The results of the needs assessment and acceptability and usefulness surveys are descriptive in nature. Assessment of anxiety between the two groups was analyzed using an unpaired t-test. In total, 10 patients participated in the needs assessment. All participants agreed that in preparing for their brachytherapy treatment, it is important to include information on how treatment works, what treatments will feels like, side effects and management, and what to expect after treatment. With respect to learning about brachytherapy treatment, all participants agreed that information should be presented/available in multiple formats including, written, verbal, and electronic sources. When asked about the preferred format, the majority cited the internet as the preferred format that would be most useful to them. Based on these results, a patient experience video was developed. A total of 10 patients participated in the evaluation of the new education tool. All participants agreed the video was informative, graphically appealing, presented the information clearly and was written at an appropriate level. With respect to anxiety levels, there was a trend seen for less anxiety reported by the post new intervention group however this was not found to be statistically significant (p=0.586). Endometrial cancer patients undergoing brachytherapy treatments have unique educational needs in preparing for their treatments. The development of this patient experience video aids in helping patients prepare and cope with their brachytherapy treatments.