Effectiveness of multimedia courses in improving self-care among patients with breast cancer undergoing radiotherapy

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.

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.

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.

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.