MULTIMEDIA STRATEGY FOR THE ACQUISITION OF KNOWLEDGE AND REDUCING ANXIETY OF CAREGIVERS OF CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS IN CHEMOTHERAPY: RANDOMIZED CLINICAL TRIAL
Educational technology; Multimedia; Nursing; Caregiver; Cancer
Child-juvenile cancer affects individuals from zero to nineteen years of age, with leukemia, Central Nervous System tumors and lymphomas being the most prevalent types in this population. Regarding treatment, chemotherapy is still the essential therapy to achieve a cure, whether performed alone or in association with surgery and radiotherapy. Chemotherapy affects the lives not only of children and adolescents, but also of their caregivers, who usually make changes in their routine to adapt to the new reality. Thus, it is necessary that health professionals, especially nurses who are involved with the health education process, seek educational strategies that facilitate the understanding of the guidelines by the caregiver and contribute to increasing knowledge and reducing the anxiety involved with the start of treatment. In this sense, this project aims to evaluate the effect of a multimedia strategy compared to standard guidelines for knowledge acquisition and anxiety reduction of caregivers of children and adolescents undergoing chemotherapy. The specific objectives are: to verify the anxiety of caregivers of children/adolescents undergoing chemotherapy before and after using a multimedia strategy and standard guidelines; verifying the knowledge of caregivers of children/adolescents undergoing chemotherapy through the use of a multimedia strategy and standard guidelines; to compare the effectiveness of using a multimedia strategy with the standard guidelines for knowledge acquisition and anxiety reduction of caregivers of children/adolescents undergoing chemotherapy. It is a blind randomized controlled clinical trial, which will be carried out at Infantil Varela Santiago Hospital, in Natal-RN. The sample will include 52 caregivers of children and adolescents undergoing chemotherapy treatment, randomly divided through the process of randomization into the Control Group and Experimental Group. The experimental group will receive standard guidelines from the institution associated with a multimedia strategy on the process of chemotherapy treatment - Digital animation film with duration of 12 minutes and 22 seconds.While the Control Group will only receive the standard guidelines that are provided at the institution. As data collection instruments, the State Trace Anxiety Inventory will be used and an instrument to assess the knowledge of caregivers about the guidelines on chemotherapy treatment. For data collection, the study will have the main researcher and two researchers to apply the instruments. Researcher 1 will apply the instrument to assess anxiety in all participants before the chemotherapy treatment, the researcher will apply the instrument in both groups, and researcher 2 after the interventions, without knowing which one belongs to which group, will apply the anxiety instrument and the instrument to assess the knowledge acquired in both groups. Regarding data analysis, descriptive and inferential statistics will be performed. Before data collection, the project will be analyzed by the Ethics Committee in Central Research of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, following the ethical requirements of research with human beings.