Low health literacy and misinformation about cancer are highly prevalent throughout sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and remain a recurring challenge for cancer care across the region. Poor cancer knowledge and a lack of proper counselling is a leading cause of treatment abandonment among patients receiving cancer care at Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH) in Malawi.

A recent study proved that cancer educational videos serve to empower patients to engage with their providers about their care which is important in a setting where patients are not often involved in shared decision making regarding their care.

In a resource-constrained setting, providers are often overworked, and clinics are understaffed, so providing comprehensive cancer patient education is not feasible.

Health care delivery is driven by providers, and shared decision making is limited. In addition, cancer clinics in many low- and middle-income settings are often characterised by long patient wait times. Therefore, incorporating standardised patient education videos can increase the efficiency of oncology service delivery.

The study published in JCO Oncology developed cancer educational videos featuring Malawian providers and played them in the KCH oncology clinic. The videos addressed cancer-related topics, including disease biology, common myths, diagnostic procedures, treatment, side effects, and survivorship. After 6 months of implementation, results from 50 pre-and post-intervention surveys were compared to assess change in cancer knowledge and care experience.

The results showed that post-intervention the patients found the videos to be very helpful across all queried domains, with > 95% of patients reporting that the videos were very helpful. Patients felt that the videos were very helpful in terms of understanding their disease, their treatment, how to take care of themselves during treatment, expected side effects of treatment, and when to contact providers with dangerous symptoms. Patients felt empowered to speak up to their providers and found the videos entertaining.

The authors conclude that standardised education materials for patients can be feasibly implemented throughout sub-Saharan Africa and are urgently needed. Cancer educational videos are a low-cost way to educate and empower patients with cancer in resource-constrained settings although in-person discussions remain a crucial part of care.

ecancer is a charity that is already working to provide accessible, high-quality educational content, free to the global oncology community. Our mission is to raise the standards of care for cancer patients across the world through education. We have over 8000 videos with leading experts, viewed millions of times worldwide. ecancer offers online e-learning courses to doctors all over the world free of charge. These courses cater to health care professionals in low-middle income settings to get the extra training they may want.

Source: JCO Global Oncology