Psychoeducational Interventions with Pediatric Cancer Patients: Part I. Patient Information and Knowledge

We present a systematic review of published research on psychoeducational interventions for children with cancer. The current lack of an organizational model for this literature makes it difficult to form a coherent picture of the scattered literature and draw nomothetic conclusions. A model is described that is based on functional concepts from the literature on learning and instructional design. It is argued that it makes sense conceptually to analyze psychoeducational interventions in terms of psychoeducational principles, especially if the purpose is to illuminate the learning processes involved. Three categories of intervention are distinguished and the first of these, informational interventions to influence patient knowledge, is considered in this paper, and the other two categories will be reviewed in a subsequent paper. This review is organized by categories of information needs, intervention modes, and major types of independent variables. We concluded that the research supports few generalizable conclusions at this time, except that development of health-related knowledge in children is best accomplished by information transfer methods that are highly interactive and individualized. Interactive multimedia formats such as video games are seen as having the best potential, but further research is required.