Nurse Navigation Versus Current Care Coordination During Colorectal Cancer Trajectories

The primary hypothesis in this study is:

Nurse navigation, as a specific, defined concept of coherent help through cancer trajectories, will prove superior to current care coordination with regard to patients' self-evaluated self-efficacy for cancer from inclusion to one week after receipt of information about treatment end or not later than one year after inclusion.

Allocation The randomization will be stratified by age and gender. The rational is that age and gender is differently associated with benefit by a given care.

Data collection Participants fill in questionnaires at four measurements, and supplements to sociodemographic information as well as information for an economic evaluation is collected from provider side.

The questionnaires for participants are available in paper and electronically, and participants are allowed to discuss the individual questions with a person whom they trust before filling in their answers. If a participant is blind or dyslexic and has no one to help them fill in the questionnaires, a trained study nurse will read out loud the questions and fill in the participant's answers, and eventually in this process, listen to the participant's pros and cons, acknowledge that they are heard, ask for an answer and read out loud the question again. All data are stored in Research Electronic Data Capture (RedCap).

Blinding The trial is not blinded but all participants are told, there is no favorite group. The statistician is blinded to randomization group and this blinding will be unveiled after the data is analyzed.

Statistics Data are analyzed following the modified intention-to-treat principle, which is carried out by a senior statistician in close collaboration with the research group. Usual descriptive statistics will be used to summarize baseline and subject characteristics. The analyses of the primary endpoint, i.e. change in self-evaluated self-efficacy for cancer from inclusion (measurement 1) to end of treatment (measurement 3), and the secondary outcomes are done using analysis of covariance of the measure at measurement 3 with randomization group as a factor and measure at measurement 1 as covariate. In secondary analyses for all endpoints (measurement 1-4), the change over time will be investigated by mixed effects repeated measures analysis with randomization group as factor and random effects for subjects. These analyses are repeated within the subgroup of all cancer patients and the subgroup of cancer patients treated with curative aim. In the subgroup analyses, the influence of relevant subject-level confounders such as age, disease-stage, treatment, etc. will be explored, and appropriate adjustment will be performed. An economic evaluation will be performed for each randomized group and compared.

Inclusion criteria

• Lesions suspected for cancer in the colon or rectum recognized through colonoscopy or sigmoidoscopy found at scopy centres in Odense, Nyborg, Svendborg or Slagelse, all in Denmark
• Can speak and understand Danish.

Exclusion criteria

• Life-threatening disease: score 4 in the American Society of Anaesthesiologists status classification system.
• Dementia ( Diagnosed or in a diagnostic phase).
• Severe psychiatric disease ( Diagnosed or in a diagnostic phase).
• Mentally retarded ( Diagnosed or in a diagnostic phase).