Healthcare providers' expected barriers and facilitators to the implementation of person-centered long-term follow-up care for childhood cancer survivors: A PanCareFollowUp study

Background

Childhood cancer survivors face high risks of adverse late health effects. Long-term follow-up care for childhood cancer survivors is crucial to improve their health and quality of life. However, implementation remains a challenge. To support implementation of high-quality long-term follow-up care, we explored expected barriers and facilitators for establishing this follow-up care among healthcare providers from four European clinics.

Methods

A qualitative study was conducted using four focus groups comprising 30 healthcare providers in total. The semi-structured interview guide was developed based on the Grol and Wensing framework. Data was analyzed following a thematic analysis, combining both inductive and deductive approaches to identify barriers and facilitators across the six levels of Grol and Wensing: innovation, professional, patient, social, organizational and economic and political.

Results

Most barriers were identified on the organizational level, including insufficient staff, time, capacity and psychosocial support. Other main barriers included limited knowledge of late effects among healthcare providers outside the long-term follow-up care team, inability of some survivors to complete the survivor questionnaire and financial resources. Main facilitators included motivated healthcare providers and survivors, a skilled hospital team, collaborations with important stakeholders like general practitioners, and psychosocial care facilities, utilization of the international collaboration and reporting long-term follow-up care results to convince hospital managers.

Conclusion

This study identified several factors for successful implementation of long-term follow-up care for childhood cancer survivors. Our findings showed that specific attention should be given to knowledge, capacity, and financial issues, along with addressing psychosocial issues of survivors.