I am a Nurse Clinician Scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto Canada. I am also an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto. As a researcher, I am passionate about developing new ways to improve the way healthcare is delivered to children with life threatening and chronic illnesses. Because there is a lot of work to be done to improve the quality of life of children and teens with cancer, I have a special interest in developing interventions for this group.

For example, I have recently developed and tested an iPhone-based pain app for pediatric cancer-related pain called Pain Squad. This app provides healthcare providers and teens with detailed information about the teen’s pain, including how severe it is, where and when it is occurring, and what medications a teen has tried. This information can help the healthcare team make the best decisions about how to treat the pain. We also finished testing a new app called Pain Squad+, that uses the pain information teens enter in the app to immediately give them advice on how to handle the pain. This app is now undergoing modifications, using suggestions from teens, and then will be tested in a full-scale randomized controlled trial.

Watch a video about Pain Squad here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0keTVtla-8

My lab has also developed a bilingual (English and French) web-based program to provide education to teens with cancer on what cancer is, how to best manage the ways it impacts their lives, and what they will need to know after their cancer treatment is done. We have used interviews with teens with cancer, healthcare providers and parents to decide on the education this program should include. Teens have also used the program extensively to make sure it is easy to use, understandable and fun. Currently were using a study called a pilot randomized controlled trial to begin to test how effective this web-based intervention is at improving the lives of teens with cancer.

My lab is also involved with developing an online communication platform for patients, caregivers and healthcare providers, called LOOP. This online platform allows patients to add different healthcare providers from their circle of care into their “loop” and allows for a secure platform communication among the different parties. This will help to reduce the burden on the patient for coordination of care.

In addition, there are a number of other neat projects being rolled out in my lab to help kids and teens with cancer. For example, I am testing the impact of both a human-like robot and virtual reality system at decreasing the pain kids feel during skin-breaking procedures (like port accesses). I am also developing a peer-mentorship program where teens with cancer will receive social support and education from older teen cancer survivors through the Internet and text-messaging. 

Having the chance to conduct research that can make the lives of children and teens with cancer better is an honour! The Stinson’s Super Squad is therefore grateful for any support you can provide so we can continue working to help these brave patients along their journey.