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‘You’re kind of left to your own devices’: a qualitative focus group study of patients with breast, prostate or blood cancer at a hospital in the South West of England, exploring their engagement with exercise and physical activity during cancer treatment and in the months following standard care

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posted on 2022-07-01, 10:53 authored by Sian Karen Smith, Gareth WiltshireGareth Wiltshire, Frankie F Brown, Haryana Dhillon, Mike Osborn, Sarah Wexler, Mark Beresford, Mark A Tooley, James E Turner

Objectives

The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of patients with breast, prostate or blood cancer, regarding their (1) engagement with exercise and physical activity during treatment and in the months following standard care, and (2) the meanings attached to these lifestyle behaviours.

Design

A qualitative study using focus groups. The groups were audio recorded, transcribed and analysed using Framework analysis.SettingA hospital-based cancer treatment centre in the South-West of England.

Participants

Eighteen people who had either completed treatment or were currently on maintenance therapy for breast, prostate or blood cancer (non‐Hodgkin lymphoma or Hodgkin lymphoma).

Results

Participants reported treatment limiting their ability to engage in exercise and physical activity. However, participants were aware of the physiological, emotional and social benefits of exercise and expressed a desire to maintain a physically active lifestyle before, during and after treatment. They noted a lack of concrete guidance and appropriate exercise classes for people with cancer and felt poorly informed about the type, intensity, duration and frequency of exercise they should be undertaking. As such, participants reported making decisions on their own, relying on their intuition and listening to their bodies to gauge whether they were doing enough exercise (or not).

Conclusions

Participants were aware of the benefits of a physically active lifestyle during and following cancer treatment, but were not familiar with exercise and physical activity guidelines for people living with and beyond cancer. There is a need for healthcare professionals, academics and policy makers to determine how exercise and physical activity can be supported in clinical settings in realistic and meaningful ways accommodating individual patient circumstances.

Funding

University of Bath

Royal United Hospital Bath NHS Foundation Trust Research Capability Fund

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

BMJ Open

Volume

12

Issue

3

Publisher

BMJ

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© Author(s) (or their employer(s))

Publisher statement

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

Acceptance date

2022-02-08

Publication date

2022-03-28

Copyright date

2022

eISSN

2044-6055

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Gareth Wiltshire. Deposit date: 27 June 2022

Article number

e056132

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