Coping with the cancer experience. I. Developing an education and support programme for cancer patients and their significant others.

Cancer patients and their significant others need information to understand events throughout the course of cancer. They also need support in mobilizing coping strategies as situational demands exceed their personal resources. Following a learning-needs assessment, Swedish cancer patients and their significant others demonstrated a desire to learn not only about the disease and treatment procedures, but also about the adaptation process to live with the uncertainty inherent in a diagnosis of cancer. It has, however, repeatedly been reported that communication barriers exist, and that information does not always reach the intended target. Thus, to increase knowledge and facilitate efforts to cope with the cancer experience an approach was used in which the provision of information was combined with emotional support in an education course. Patients and their significant others (n = 149) were actively involved in developing the education and support programme together with extensive learning materials. The programme, entitled Learning to live with cancer, has its roots in the educational philosophy of human learning, and is based on the findings from the original learning-needs assessment.