Childhood Cancer

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The Therapy-Related Symptom Checklist for Children (TRSC-C): Systematic Monitoring of Symptoms to Improve Oncology Interventions.

Institution: 
Kansas Medical Center Research Institute, Inc.
Researcher(s): 
Phoebe Williams
Grant Type: 
Nurse Researcher Grants
Year Awarded: 
2008
Type of Childhood Cancer: 
General Pediatric Cancer
Project Description: 

The Therapy-Related Symptom Checklist – Children (TRSC-C) will be a child-friendly standardized version of an earlier instrument (TRSC) developed for use with adult oncology patients. The TRSC is a comprehensive checklist of symptoms of concern to oncology patients under treatment that includes patient reports of the intensity of each symptom. The TRSC can be completed in less than five minutes prior to clinic consultation. A summated "symptom concern score" from the instrument as well as the individual checked items have been shown to be helpful for clinical diagnosis and treatment.This study is an innovation in clinical pediatric oncology treatment and care. Management of symptoms of adults while under treatment for cancer is often under-documented in medical records and, consequently, ineffectively managed. This appears to be true also in the case of children; however, unlike adults, evidence for under-documentation and less than optimal management of symptoms is anecdotal. There is no pediatric literature on this topic. Child-friendly modified items of the adult version of the TRSC and new items will be used to collect information about patient symptoms for the calibration of the instrument. The TRSC-C also will be examined for acceptability to children, parents, and clinicians. The PI and Co-PI have done studies of families and children with chronic conditions including cancer; a co-investigator at one of the study sites is a mid-level oncology clinician-researcher. The PI and Co--PI are developers of the adult version of the TRSC. All clinicians involved in this study have experience pilot testing an earlier child-friendly version of the TRSC using a very small sample.