Background Ninety percent of patients receiving radiation therapy experience side effects. Busy schedules and intensive health education programs may lead to incomplete education content delivery and inaccurate patient self-care implementation. This study investigated whether multimedia health education improves the accuracy of patient self-care implementation compared with paper-based education. Methods From March 11, 2020 to February 28, 2021, 110 patients were randomly divided into experimental and control groups, each comprising 55 participants. Paper-based materials were used along with multimedia materials. Radiology self-care awareness questionnaires were administered to both groups before the first treatment and on day 10. The differences in radiology self-care awareness between the two groups was analyzed with inferential statistics, independent t tests, categorical data, and Pearson’s chi-squared test. Differences between the two groups were considered significant at a p value of < 0.05. Results The treatment accuracy rate improved from 10.9 to 79.1% in the control group and from 24.8 to 98.5% in the experimental group, indicating an improvement in both groups. The difference was significant. These results indicate that the intervention could improve the effectiveness of self-care. Conclusions Participants who used pretreatment multimedia health education exhibited a higher rate of having a correct understanding of treatment self-care than did the control group. These findings can inform the development of a patient-centered cancer treatment knowledge base for improved quality of care.
As cancer treatment continuously improves, survival rates after treatment have also drastically improved. However, the reasons patients do not complete the entire courses of treatment and the qualities of life of patients receiving radiotherapy are seldom examined. In this study, the fishbone diagram analysis was used to retrospectively examine the interruption factors in our department. Then, we provided more nursing interventions in the future to alleviate discomfort in patients and improve treatment completion rates. The overarching goal was to provide a reference for nursing staff to improve nursing quality during radiotherapy. The fishbone diagram analysis found four correlation factors causing radiotherapy interruption: patient factors (group A), event factors (group B), disease factors (group C), and device factors (group D). The side effects caused by radiotherapy (which belong to group C factors) accounted for 29.3% (68 patients), complications caused by cancer (also group C factors) accounted for 21.6% (51 patients), patient autonomy (group A factors) accounted for 22% (50 patients), and family factors (group A factors) accounted for 15.1% (35 patients). Radiotherapy side effects resulting in an inability to complete the full course of treatment were the biggest factor (68 patients/29.3%). The possible interventions to improve adherence to treatment include establishing procedures and patient record forms, monitoring body weight changes weekly and conducting regular blood draws, and incorporating personalized nursing health education and measures.Such interventions can help reduce discomfort caused by side effects and improve pain, nutrition, and oral mucositis. Staged nursing health education, referral to a nutritionist for the monitoring of the nutritional status during treatment, and follow-up on posttreatment status by cancer case managers can help effectively decrease discomfort caused by side effects. A multidisciplinary approach to care has been used to increase confidence in treatment among patients, and therefore, the interruption and non-completion rates decreased from 30% (232 in a total of 764 patients treated) and 65% (150 in a total of 232 patients with interruptions) in 2016 and 28% (229/817) and 38% (87/229) in 2017 to 26.8% (243/907) and 33% (80/243) in 2018.
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