Koutoukidis, DA, Lopes, S, Fisher, A et al. (3 more authors) (2018) Lifestyle advice to cancer survivors: a qualitative study on the perspectives of health professionals. BMJ Open, 8 (3). e020313. ISSN 2044-6055
Abstract
Adoption of healthy lifestyle behaviours has shown promising effectiveness in reducing the high morbidity burden of cancer survivors. Health professionals (HPs) are well suited to provide lifestyle advice but few survivors report receiving guidance from them. This study aimed to explore HPs' perspective of lifestyle advice (on healthy eating, physical activity, smoking, and alcohol) for cancer survivors.In-depth semistructured qualitative interviews were conducted by telephone or face to face. Data were analysed using qualitative content analysis.Twenty-one UK HPs working in secondary care with breast, prostate or colorectal cancer survivors were interviewed.The overarching theme was that HPs' desire to provide lifestyle advice was not necessarily matched by knowledge and action. Three main themes were identified: (1) survivorship-centred barriers to provision, (2) HP-centred barriers to provision, and (3) optimal delivery of lifestyle advice. Results suggested that HPs' perceptions of survivors' current status of practising health behaviours, their perceived socioeconomic barriers and ability to practise health behaviours, and HPs' fear for potential loss of connection with the patient influenced provision of lifestyle advice. Further factors included HPs' knowledge of healthy lifestyle guidelines, feeling that they were not the 'right person' to provide advice, and lack of time and resources. HPs stressed that the optimal delivery of lifestyle advice should (1) be tailored to the individual and delivered throughout the cancer journey, (2) be focused on small and achievable changes framed as part of their treatment regimen and (3) be cost-effective for wide-scale implementation.Incorporation of the identified barriers when developing HP training programmes and lifestyle interventions could increase the probability of successful behavioural change, and thus improve outcomes for cancer survivors.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2018. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted. This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
Keywords: | cancer survivors; guidelines; health professionals; interventions; lifestyle |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Medicine (Leeds) > Leeds Institute of Health Sciences (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number Yorkshire Cancer Research Not Known |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 10 Apr 2018 12:41 |
Last Modified: | 10 Apr 2018 13:07 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | BMJ Publishing Group |
Identification Number: | 10.1136/bmjopen-2017-020313 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:129442 |