Pretend Play as an Intervention for Children With Cancer: A Feasibility Study

Abstract

Children with cancer suffer from symptoms and burdensome treatments that often cause distress to children and their families. Mortality is one aspect of cancer diagnosis, while another is the quality of life and well-being during and after the treatment. By supporting children’s communication, self-efficacy and coping ability in the care situation, children are given the possibilities for increased independence and participation and are allowed to develop an influence over their care. The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of an adult-facilitated pretend play intervention for children with cancer. Five children with ongoing treatment for cancer were invited to a play intervention that consisted of six to eight sessions of structured pretend play aimed at increasing participation, independence, and well-being. A mixed method design was used to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of the play intervention. Measures were collected before and after interventions, and in conjunction with every play session. Results suggest that the children enjoyed the play intervention. Findings indicate small improvements regarding self-efficacy in care situations and equal or increased quality of life for participants. A main finding was that no adverse events or increased worrying was reported in conjunction with play sessions. Therefore, the intervention is regarded as safe, feasible, and acceptable as reported by participants and their primary caregivers and a possible means of increasing participation and independence in children with a cancer diagnosis.

Communication Tools Used in Cancer Communication with Children: A Scoping Review

“…Nine studies assessed the effects of the communication tools [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41]. Sixteen feasibility studies focused on developing the tools and assessed their feasibility [42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57]. The included studies were conducted in 11 countries involving more than 1562 participants, including children with cancer, their parents, and HCPs.…”

“…The included studies were conducted in 11 countries involving more than 1562 participants, including children with cancer, their parents, and HCPs. Ten studies out of twenty-five were conducted in the USA [33,34,36,41,45,[48][49][50]56,57], and other studies were researched in various countries (two studies: Brazil, Canada, and multiple countries [37,42,44,[53][54][55]), one study: China, Germany, Iran, Norway, Pakistan, Sweden, and Turkey [35,[38][39][40]43,47,52]). Two studies did not specify the country setting [46,51].…”

“…Eight studies researched the same tools as other studies [38,52,54,55,[58][59][60][61]. There was a variety of interventions, such as computer games (seven studies) [35,37,39,40,45,48,57], play therapy (five studies) [42,44,51,53,56], computer-based communication tools (three studies) [43,47,50], CD-ROM (three studies) [33,34,36], videos (two studies) [41,46], and brochures (one study) [49]. Mobile application to provide the information on late effects of childhood cancer…”

Designing Expert System for Diagnosing Cancer with Forward Chaining Method

“…To prevent cancer, live a healthy lifestyle, which is a balanced diet, not smoking, and not consuming alcoholic. [2]…”

“…[6] In addition, expert systems can also help experts with the knowledge needed to assist activities. Expert systems are systems that use human knowledge recorded in computers to solve problems that usually require human expertise [2][3]. A good expert system is designed to be able to solve a certain problem by imitating the work of the experts [5] Expert systems can be presented in two environments, namely: development and consultation.…”