e-Poster Presentation Clinical Oncology Society of Australia Annual Scientific Meeting 2020

Evaluation of online patient education videos to assist decision making for patients considering trial participation at a United Kingdom Phase 1 Cancer Clinical Trials Unit – a useful tool in the era of COVID-19 and social distancing (#345)

Abhijit Pal 1 , Mary V Zyl 1 , Bridget Cooley 1 , Janet Hanwell 1 , Andrea Biondo 1 , Rajiv Shinde 1 , Sachin Khurana 1 , Thubeena Manickavasagar 1 , Julia Lai-Kwon 1 , Crescens Tiu 1 , Anna Minchom 1 , Udai Banerji 1 , Johann De Bono 1 , Deme Karikios 2 , Frances Boyle 3 , Juanita Lopez 1
  1. Drug Development Unit, Royal Marsden Hospital, Sutton, London, United Kingdom
  2. Medical Oncology, Nepean Hospital, Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia
  3. Medical Oncology, Mater Hospital, North Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Aims

The COVID-19 pandemic has demanded that healthcare providers reduce footfall in hospitals as far as possible.  After the United Kingdom was released from lockdown, we instituted virtual telephone clinics for new patient referrals prior to seeing them in person. A subgroup of these patients were provided with a series of online educational video modules and we aimed to determine feasibility and utility.

Methods

We prospectively collected data from 18th May - 9th July. New patients were approached at the end of the virtual clinic and we aimed to enrol 30 patients.  In Step 1, patients were emailed a tailored Quality of Informed Consent (Joffe et al., 2001), a validated instrument which measures comprehension of key domains of clinical trials – Parts A and B (QuIC-A, QuIC- B).  In Step 2, they were sent the link to the videos and in Step 3, patients were asked to complete the QuIC-A and QuIC - B again and a brief user feedback survey.

Results

33 patients agreed to participate - of these, 23 completed Steps 1 and 2, and 15 completed Step 3.  User feedback was available for 15 patients - 100% of patients found the educational videos quite useful or very useful. Comments were positive especially on ability to rewind videos.   Paired QuIC-A and QuIC-B data was available for 13 patients – after exposure to the videos, there was a numerical increase in average scores from 74 to 80 (p = 0.12) on QuIC-A and a significant increase from 62 to 67 (p = 0.02) on QuIC-B.

Conclusions

We trialled a set of 10 educational videos and showed that virtual telephone clinic patients found them usable, useful, and that they also increased both objective and subjective comprehension on a validated tool measuring quality of informed consent for clinical trials.  

  1. Joffe S, Cook EF, Cleary D, Clark JW, Jane C. Quality of Informed Consent : a New Measure of Research Subjects. JNCI J Natl Cancer institutes. 2001;93(2):139–47