Facilitators and barriers for electronic social support

Nonprofit cancer societies play an important role in providing social support for patients with cancer through nonprofit electronic counselling services (ECS) provided by counselling nurses (CNs) with experience in oncology nursing. To date, there exist only few studies addressing the facilitators and barriers for social support of patients with cancer as reported by CNs.

To describe the facilitators and barriers for electronic social support of patients with cancer received from the ECS in the nonprofit cancer societies as reported by CNs.

Qualitative design with three group interviews was conducted with 10 CNs in three nonprofit cancer societies in southern and western parts of Finland. Interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim and content analysed inductively.

The facilitators were promotion of the access to ECS, functioning structures of ECS, utilisation of the strengths of an individual CN in ECS, promotion of the life management of patients, patient-centeredness as a basis of ECS and reliability of ECS. The barriers for electronic social support were the unmet paths between ECS and patients, nonfunctioning structures of ECS, inadequacy of mutual communication and lack of shared viewpoints between CNs and patients.

Facilitators and barriers for electronic social support of patients with cancer were related to organisation, individuals and counselling process. The counselling work in ECS as its best promotes the life management of patients with cancer but, alternatively, can lead to conflicts in communication and therefore be a barrier for electronic social support.

To make the nonprofit ECS better known, the cooperation with hospitals is needed to enable social support for patients. To improve communication between CNs and patients, continuous communications skills training and functional working environments are needed.