Variables
cancer
CANCER, DISEASE
To assess the impact of pandemic containment strategies on our cancer patients, we asked them questions about four aspects: Restrictions (“Have you had any restrictions with regard to your disease since 16 Mar 2020?: Yes/No If yes, which?”), influence on disease (“Do you think that the limitations due to the COVID-19 pandemic have an influence on the course of your disease?: Yes/No”), use of PIKKO (“Did you use parts of the PIKKO intervention during the limitations due to the COVID-19 pandemic?”), and their own sense of burden (“8 sub-questions on stressful situations to the assessment of the burden of the restrictions (CBS)”).Our self-designed COVID-19 conditional burden scale (CBS) questions covered the points of (1) hygienic strategies, (2) change of appointments, (3) movement in the public space, (4) cover mouth and nose, (5) no accompanying persons, (6) interaction with the medical staff, (7) interaction with the nursing staff, (8) ban on visits to the wards. Each of the questions could be rated on a 5-point Likert scale (0 = not stressful, 1 = a little stressful, 2 = moderately stressful, 3 = much stressful, 4 = very much stressful). Since not every patient was exposed to all eight stressful situations, the mean should be taken only for the questions answered, so missing (= item did not apply or was not ticked) enters the equation. The following formula was used to compute the CBS score (= the mean of all the patient’s responses): CBS-Score = Sum(CBS1, CBS2, CBS3, CBS4, CBS5, CBS6, CBS7, CBS8) / (8 – Sum(Missing)).The score ranges from 0 (no load) to 4 (heavy load). Cronbachs Alpha for the cases where all 8 items were completed is 0.9 (N = 52).Furthermore, previously collected utilization data from the main PIKKO study concerning the intervention modules were analyzed for the COVID-19 period.