Reaching Independence Through Forced Learning: Learning Processes and Illness Management in Parents of Children Affected by Hemophilia

The role of the specialist nurse in comprehensive care for bleeding disorders in Europe: An integrative review

INTRODUCTION

Managing bleeding disorders (BDs) is complex, requiring a comprehensive approach coordinated by a multidisciplinary team (MDT). Haemophilia nurses (HNs) play a central role in the MDT, frequently coordinating care. As novel treatments bring change to the treatment landscape, ongoing education and development is key. However, understanding of the roles and tasks of HNs is lacking.

AIM

The EAHAD Nurses Committee sought to identify and describe the roles and tasks of the European HN.

METHODS

A five-step integrative review was undertaken, including problem identification, literature search, data evaluation, data synthesis and presentation. Relevant literature published from 2000 to 2022 was identified through database, hand and ancestry searching. Data were captured using extraction forms and thematically analysed.

RESULTS

Seven hundred and seventy-seven articles were identified; 43 were included. Five main roles were identified, with varied and overlapping associated tasks: Educator, Coordinator, Supporter, Treater and Researcher. Tasks related to education, coordination and support were most frequently described. Patient education was often 'nurse-led', though education and coordination roles concerned both patients and health care practitioners (HCPs), within and beyond the MDT. The HN coordinates care and facilitates communication. Long-term patient care relationships place HNs in a unique position to provide support. Guidelines for HN core competencies have been developed in some countries, but autonomy and practice vary.

CONCLUSION

As the treatment landscape changes, all five main HN roles will be impacted. Despite national variations, this review provides a baseline to anticipate educational needs to enable HNs to continue to fulfil their role.

A meta-ethnography of how children and young people with chronic non-cancer pain and their families experience and understand their condition, pain services, and treatments

BACKGROUND

Chronic non-cancer pain in childhood is widespread, affecting 20% to 35% of children and young people worldwide. For a sizeable number of children, chronic non-cancer pain has considerable negative impacts on their lives and quality of life, and leads to increased use of healthcare services and medication. In many countries, there are few services for managing children's chronic non-cancer pain, with many services being inadequate. Fourteen Cochrane Reviews assessing the effects of pharmacological, psychological, psychosocial, dietary or physical activity interventions for managing children's chronic non-cancer pain identified a lack of high-quality evidence to inform pain management. To design and deliver services and interventions that meet the needs of patients and their families, we need to understand how children with chronic non-cancer pain and their families experience pain, their views of services and treatments for chronic pain, and which outcomes are important to them.

OBJECTIVES

1. To synthesise qualitative studies that examine the experiences and perceptions of children with chronic non-cancer pain and their families regarding chronic non-cancer pain, treatments and services to inform the design and delivery of health and social care services, interventions and future research. 2. To explore whether our review findings help to explain the results of Cochrane Reviews of intervention effects of treatments for children's chronic non-cancer pain. 3. To determine if programme theories and outcomes of interventions match children and their families' views of desired treatments and outcomes. 4. To use our findings to inform the selection and design of patient-reported outcome measures for use in chronic non-cancer pain studies and interventions and care provision to children and their families. The review questions are: 1. How do children with chronic non-cancer pain and their families conceptualise chronic pain? 2. How do children with chronic non-cancer pain and their families live with chronic pain? 3. What do children with chronic non-cancer pain and their families think of how health and social care services respond to and manage their child's chronic pain? 4. What do children with chronic non-cancer pain and their families conceptualise as 'good' chronic pain management and what do they want to achieve from chronic pain management interventions and services?

SEARCH METHODS

Review strategy: we comprehensively searched 12 bibliographic databases including MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycInfo and grey literature sources, and conducted supplementary searches in 2020. We updated the database searches in September 2022.

SELECTION CRITERIA

To identify published and unpublished qualitative research with children aged 3 months to 18 years with chronic non-cancer pain and their families focusing on their perceptions, experiences and views of chronic pain, services and treatments. The final inclusion criteria were agreed with a patient and public involvement group of children and young people with chronic non-cancer pain and their families.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

We conducted a qualitative evidence synthesis using meta-ethnography, a seven-phase, systematic, interpretive, inductive methodology that takes into account the contexts and meanings of the original studies. We assessed the richness of eligible studies and purposively sampled rich studies ensuring they addressed the review questions. Cochrane Qualitative Methods Implementation Group guidance guided sampling. We assessed the methodological limitations of studies using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme tool. We extracted data on study aims, focus, characteristics and conceptual findings from study reports using NVivo software. We compared these study data to determine how the studies related to one another and grouped studies by pain conditions for synthesis. We used meta-ethnography to synthesise each group of studies separately before synthesising them all together. Analysis and interpretation of studies involved children with chronic non-cancer pain and their families and has resulted in theory to inform service design and delivery. Sampling, organising studies for synthesis, and analysis and interpretation involved our patient and public involvement group who contributed throughout the conduct of the review. We used the GRADE-CERQual (Confidence in the Evidence from Reviews of Qualitative research) approach to assess our confidence in each review finding. We used a matrix approach to integrate our findings with existing Cochrane Reviews on treatment effectiveness for children's chronic non-cancer pain.

MAIN RESULTS

We synthesised 43 studies sampled from 170 eligible studies reported in 182 publications. Included studies involved 633 participants. GRADE-CERQual assessments of findings were mostly high (n = 21, 58%) or moderate (n = 12, 33%) confidence with three (8%) low or very low confidence. Poorly managed, moderate or severe chronic non-cancer pain had profound adverse impacts on family dynamics and relationships; family members' emotions, well-being, autonomy and sense of self-identity; parenting strategies; friendships and socialising; children's education and future employment prospects; and parental employment. Most children and parents understood chronic non-cancer pain as having an underlying biological cause and wanted curative treatment. However, families had difficulties seeking and obtaining support from health services to manage their child's pain and its impacts. Children and parents felt that healthcare professionals did not always listen to their experiences and expertise, or believe the child's pain. Some families repeatedly visited health services seeking a diagnosis and cure. Over time, some children and families gave up hope of effective treatment. Outcomes measured within trials and Cochrane Reviews of intervention effects did not include some outcomes of importance to children and families, including impacts of pain on the whole family and absence of pain. Cochrane Reviews have mainly neglected a holistic biopsychosocial approach, which specifies the interrelatedness of biological, psychological and social aspects of illness, when selecting outcome measures and considering how chronic pain management interventions work.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS

We had high or moderate confidence in the evidence contributing to most review findings. Further research, especially into families' experiences of treatments and services, could strengthen the evidence for low or very low confidence findings. Future research should also explore families' experiences in low- to middle-income contexts; of pain treatments including opioid use in children, which remains controversial; and of social care services. We need development and testing of family-centred interventions and services acceptable to families. Future trials of children's chronic non-cancer pain interventions should include family-centred outcomes.

Nurse-led education of people with bleeding disorders and their caregivers: A scoping review

INTRODUCTION

People with bleeding disorders (PwBd) and their caregivers face many challenges in developing viable self-management strategies for living with the condition. Nurse-led education can support them to overcome these challenges. However, it is often unclear what educational needs are addressed, how nurses educate PwBd and what didactic concepts they follow.

AIM

To gain deeper insights into nurse-led patient education in haemophilia care and provide a basis for a more systematic and evidence-based approach to this task.

METHODS

A scoping review methodology was used. A systematic search for relevant publications on this topic was conducted in various databases between November 2020 and April 2021. Data sets were analysed following the PRISMA-ScR-checklist and using content analysis.

RESULTS

Of 588 studies identified, 23 sources of evidence met the inclusion criteria. The educational needs of PwBd and their families are extensive, multifaceted, and variable but rarely assessed systematically. These needs were met at certain times throughout their lifetimes. Nurse-led education differed in content, duration, and modality, including interventions such as information, consultation and instruction. An improvement in treatment-oriented self-management and self-efficacy was the most reported outcome. The didactic concepts on which the educational interventions were based were rarely specified.

CONCLUSIONS

There is a lack of systematic approaches in assessing and addressing the educational needs of PwBd and their caregivers. High variability was found in the literature regarding nurse-led patient education in haemophilia care. This suggests that more research is needed on this topic - not least on the interventions' conceptual foundations and impact models.

Health care utilization and expenditures of parents of children with and without hemophilia A

BACKGROUND: Caring for children with hemophilia A (HA) impacts many aspects of parents' lives. How this translates to caregivers' utilization of health services is unknown, and its elicitation can inform future evaluations of interventions that address caregiver burden for HA. OBJECTIVE: To understand the impact of caring for children with HA on parents' utilization of nonmental and mental health services by comparing 1-year costs and number of claims with parents of children without HA. METHODS: Retrospective matched cohort study using MarketScan commercial medical and pharmacy claims from 2011 to 2019. Children with HA were male sex, aged younger than 18 years, dependent policyholders, and had at least 1 HA-related medical claim from 2011 to 2018 and either an HA-related procedure or drug claim. Parents of children with HA (PCH) were primary or secondary policyholders, shared the same family ID as children with HA, and were continuously enrolled for 1-year post-index. PCH were matched (1:2) with parents of children without HA on age, sex, beneficiary type, child's age, number of children, index month and year, health plan type, employment status, and region. Primary outcomes were nonmental and mental health care costs (2020 US dollars). Secondary outcomes were number of nonmental health outpatient claims and utilization of mental health outpatient or drug claim. Subgroup analyses excluding parents with HA were also conducted. Productivity loss was also explored. Outcomes were compared using 2-sided, paired t-tests, and McNemar test. RESULTS: 1,068 PCH met inclusion criteria and were matched to 2,122 control parents. Mean 1-year cost for PCH was higher for nonmental health (mean difference $1,826 [95% CI = -1,000 to 4,652; P = 0.20]) and similar for mental health services (mean difference $14 [95% CI = -77 to 105; P = 0.76]). When parents with HA were excluded in the subgroup analyses, mental health cost was significantly higher for PCH (mean difference $676 [95% CI = 399 to 953; P < 0.001]). PCH had more nonmental health outpatient claims compared with parents of children without HA (mean difference 1.9 [95% CI = -1.1 to 4.9; P = 0.21]) and were 1.2 times (95% CI = 0.99 to 1.45; P = 0.07) more likely to have a mental health outpatient or drug claim. CONCLUSIONS: PCH had moderately higher health care costs and utilization compared with parents of children without HA; however, these results were not statistically significant. Future studies to better characterize HA disease severity and assess its impact on caregiver burden or to expand caregivers to spouses of adult patients with HA may be warranted. Limitations include inability to ascertain severity of HA in children and the use of claims data to capture complex effects on health care utilization. DISCLOSURES: Dr. Kim's postdoctoral fellowship is supported by Genentech, Inc. Dr. Raimundo is an employee of Genentech, Inc.

Challenges in Primary Care Regarding Children and Adolescents With Chronic Conditions in Brazil

The coordination of primary care is pivotal to the management of chronic conditions. However, current systems may not be as efficient or effective as one would hope. This article addresses to the managers and health teams in the primary care setting and their challenges regarding children and adolescents with chronic conditions in Brazil. A qualitative study was conducted with 26 primary care professionals and managers using thematic content analysis. The results showed a scarcity of specialists for referrals and a lack of professional training for dealing with this specific group of patients. It is necessary to improve health information systems to ensure the continuity of care. Current health care of children and adolescents with chronic conditions is neither efficient nor effective. For this type of care to be comprehensive, the health needs of this population must be addressed and the operational structure of the health care network must be strengthened.