Medicine education in a pediatric oncology setting: What can we do better?

When patients feel more involved in their care, there tends to be a higher rate of adherence and improved health outcomes. This can be more difficult to achieve in pediatric care since children have varying levels of medicine comprehension and parents are an integral component of the child's learning.

This study aimed to determine the satisfaction of children and families being treated for cancer with their medicine education and determine areas for improvement.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted over six months (2016/2017) with families and children with cancer, ages 7 to 19 years, (n = 6) and healthcare providers (n = 9) to assess the current method of medicine education delivery.

Families reported increased stress and anxiety levels at the time of diagnosis, negatively impacting their information retention. Patients, families, and healthcare providers reported inconsistent education delivery, including varying amounts of information throughout the treatment and inconsistencies between providers, such as medication names. Parents mentioned a desire for a more consistent and standardized delivery of medicine education, which was found to be helped by a pharmacist-led approach. Receiving supplemental written materials to support verbal education helped with learners' understanding and information retention. Ensuring that the parents are comfortable and familiar with the medicines is a significant component of medicine teaching in pediatric care because they are often responsible for the child's medications and their children see them as a trusted source of information. Ensuring parents' needs are met translates to improved medicine adherence for children with cancer.

Medicine education should occur sometime post-diagnosis once the patient/family has had time to adjust and the anxiety lessens. Medicine education should be given as consistently as possible by a recurring member of the care team, ideally the pharmacist. The learners' ability to understand and retain information should be individually assessed to determine the delivery of medicine education. Motivating and empowering learners, including children, through frequent medicine encounters could help improve adherence, patient health outcomes, and quality of life and make them more self-managing throughout life.