Patients' Experiences Using the Internet for Cancer Care

Suzanne Steffan Dickerson, RN, DNS¹, Marcia M. Boehmke, DNS, RN, ANP², and Jean K. Brown, PhD, FAAN². (1) School of Nursing, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA, (2) School of Nursing, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA

Design: Hermeneutic phenomenology is the interpretive approach used to describe and understand patients experiences through analysis of narrative texts.

Sample: Nurse volunteers from a local chapter of the Oncology Nursing Society recruited patients who used the Internet. Twenty patients were interviewed with a variety of cancer diagnoses. Nurses experiences were reported in a separate study.

Concepts: Oncology patients’ experiences using the Internet, components of helpful Internet use.

Methods: Participants were individually interviewed and asked to tell stories of Internet use. The interviews were audio taped and transcribed providing data for interpretive analysis.

Findings: Six related themes and one constitutive pattern describe the patient’s experience. The themes are: 1.) Retrieving and filtering internet information according to personal situation by the internet savvy in the patient’s support network; 2.) Seeking hope with newest treatment options while coping with fear in manageable “bytes”; 3.) Self managing personal illness situations with meaningful information regarding treatment decisions and symptom management; 4.) Empowering patients as partners when internet information served as a second opinion in decision making and validating treatment decisions. 5.) Timing of disease stages and individual coping styles influencing internet use. 6.) Internet as providing peer support. The constitutive pattern is: Internet use as assisting cancer patients discovering ways to live with cancer as a chronic illness versus death sentence.

Conclusions: Oncology patients are incorporating Internet use into their Cancer care. They perceive changing provider/patients relationships when they participate in treatment decisions.

Implications: Computer savvy patients and their networks will avail themselves of Internet information

Learning Objective #1: Gain an understanding of the meaning of Internet communications for the cancer patient
Learning Objective #2: Gain an understanding of how information from the Internet assists patients with their cancer care