Increasing motivation for cancer treatment adherence in children through a mobile educational game: a pilot study

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: It is crucial to educate childhood cancer patients (CCPs) about their illness and motivate them for cancer treatment and treatment side-effects management. OBJECTIVES: This paper describes the design, development and pilot evaluation of the proposed serious game intervention with CCPs in Malaysia. METHODS: A single-centre, single-arm intervention was conducted with CCPs (n=8). Surveys were done pre-test and posttest. RESULTS: The Protection Motivation Theory was used to measure the participants' motivation. Self-reported surveys with CCPs and caregiver dyads showed a significant increase in participants' intention to use cancer treatment. Although the increase in the intention to use daily self-care and cancer knowledge survey scores was not substantial, the post-test caregivers' feedback revealed that the game was beneficial for their children. CONCLUSION: Early results of the study have shown the intervention's potential to boost the knowledge and motivations of CCPs.

Investigating the Use of Serious Games for Cancer Control Among Children and Adolescents: Scoping Review

“…Caregivers [60][61][62][63]66,79,81,82,92,95,97,99,[101][102][103] 0 (0) 15 (27) Healthy people [7,34,66,70,75,85,91,[106][107][108][109][110][111] 8 (100) 5 ( 9)…”

“…For cancer care, the target outcome most addressed by the articles was using serious games for symptom management (28/55, 51%) [35,42,52,58,61,64,65,[71][72][73]76,77,[81][82][83][84][86][87][88][89]91,92,94,97,99,100,104,105], followed closely by exploring participants' preferences for the content of the serious games (24/55, 44%) [55,56,62,63,67,68,70,75,79,[84][85][86]90,[92][93][94][95][96][97][98][101]…”

“…Serious game preference [7,55,56,62,63,67,68,70,75,79,[84][85][86]90,[92][93][94][95][96][97][98][101][102][103][104]108,110,111] 4 (50) 24 (44) Treatment adherence [69,95,101] 0 (0) 3 ( 6) Cancer education [34,55,56,80,95,101,105,106,109] 3 (38) 6 (11) Healthy behavior promotion [42,54,57,60,65,74,…”

“…The majority of the included studies were published between 2019 and 2023. To be specific, 5 out of 8 (63%) cancer prevention serious game articles[7,106,[109][110][111] and 35 out of 55 (64%) cancer care serious game articles[35,42,54,58,59,[61][62][63]65,66,71,72,74,75,[78][79][80][81][82]85,[91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105] were published between 2019 and 2023. The studies were conducted in Asia, Europe, North America, and Oceania, with the majority of the studies being conducted in Europe and North America.…”

“…As mentioned in our inclusion criteria, studies examining adult populations were included if these also examined and isolated data for our population of interest (ie, children and/or adolescents), or if adults were interviewed about children or adolescents. Of our included studies, 25 of the 55 (45%) cancer care articles[52,55,56,[60][61][62][66][67][68][69][79][80][81][82]84,85,[92][93][94][95]97,99,101,102,104] and 2 of the 8 (25%) cancer prevention articles[34,109] included adults as well as adolescents and/or children. Two studies only included adults (being studies where parents were interviewed about their children, but where the children did not participate in the study, themselves), with both of these studies being cancer care articles[63,103].…”