Cancer treatment can be scary, and research has shown that the anxiety affecting over a third of all cancer patients as they undergo treatment has a real impact on their quality of life. Radiotherapy, in particular, can lead to anxiety and claustrophobia because the patients are restrained during treatment, but an initiative out of Umeå University in Sweden is calling for new ways to address the issue of patient comfort.

"I wanted to understand why these problematic experiences exist within radiotherapy today, and how design research could help to call attention to and improve the treatment process," Tara Mullaney, doctoral study at Umeå Institute of Design, said in a statement.

As health care transitions from focusing on providing the best treatment to providing the best care for individual patients, Mullaney believes attending to a patient's experience of care can improve both their well being and the efficacy of the treatment.

That means examining the patient's interactions with the care team, the medical technology that treats them and the information they receive beforehand about the treatment process.

A lack of adequate communication with technologists can trigger anxiety and fear in the patients. However, care staff can mitigate those feelings by establishing a trusting relationship with the patient and helping them become familiar with the technology being used to treat them.

But the question is — why are technologies that trigger anxiety and claustrophobia being developed? Mullaney's research suggests that when the technologies are under development, patients are not considered the users of the technologies and because of that, their interactions with the technologies are not addressed.

Mullaney and her team at the institute developed a series of design interventions to try to improve patients' experiences during radiotherapy. One project, which was funded by the Swedish Childhood Cancer Foundation, led to the development of a special preparation material for young children to go through before radiotherapy in order to lessen their fear about the treatment process.

In another project, the team developed a new way to position patients that allows them to participate in the treatment process. That concept has been picked up by the Swedish national testbed for innovative radiotherapy, which received funding from Vinnova, a Swedish government agency, to evaluate it further.

The research was conducted in collaboration with the radiotherapy departments in the University Hospital of Umeå, Karolinska University Hospital and Uppsala University Hospital in Sweden.

Back to HCB News

European News Homepage