Macmillan Survivorship Research Group, University of Southampton

Many people experience problems, including loss of confidence, following primary treatment that may not be easy to manage without support. Some problems may be difficult to change, however supporting people to live with problems can be helpful (e.g. having an impact on how ‘bothersome’ a problem is rather than removing the problem per se). Cancer related fatigue is experienced by many people following primary treatment.
Forms of support designed to increase people’s confidence to self manage problems have been shown to be effective in enhancing quality of life. We are developing an online resource and will test whether confidence to self manage cancer related fatigue can be improved by engaging with the online form of self management support.

Cancer related fatigue may have a wide ranging impact on individuals such as how they feel about themselves, whether and how they engage in everyday activities, and may affect their relationships with others. This intervention will complement established work by developing and testing an online resource with a focus on enhancing self efficacy for those people who use the internet, or are willing to use the internet, as a self management resource.

The online resource will bring together clinical knowledge; lay examples of managing cancer related fatigue for people who have completed treatment; and a number of structured activities that have been shown to enhance self efficacy in other settings. This resource will be created in partnership with survivors, Macmillan partners, clinical teams and academic experts to maximise its relevance and reach. The online resource is being developed and user tested, we will conduct pilot work to test out the proposed methods, then a feasibility study will be conducted to test its effectiveness at enhancing self efficacy to self manage cancer related fatigue following primary treatment.

We aim to build the online resource to support self management in a number of areas but for the purposes of this intervention and to determine whether the components of the intervention are effective in enhancing self efficacy we will focus on cancer related fatigue and its consequences for everyday life once a person has completed their primary cancer treatment as this is an area that has received research attention.