Shared Meditation Involving Cancer Patients, Health Professionals and Third Persons: Perceptions of Participants Through a Focus Group Study.

People with cancer often experience psychological distress and in addition, the practice of oncology is one of the most stressful areas of medicine for health professionals. Mindfulness meditation has been used to alleviate stress-related symptoms. We therefore ran a pilot study to assess the feasibility of a mindfulness intervention involving cancer patients, health professionals, and third persons together, as part of a comprehensive project aiming to evaluate the added value of 'meditating together'. Following on from our quantitative analyses of the project, we investigated its qualitative aspects through focus groups to explore the perceptions of participants regarding their experience. Focus groups conducted in 7 patients, 7 health professionals, and 8 third persons after the intervention showed that 'meditating together' was generally appreciated, particularly by patients, who found it motivating and a way to relieve their feelings of loneliness in the face of illness. All participants reported better stress management. They also shared benefits and difficulties concerning the practice of meditation and the programme's modalities. In addition, they all stated that the programme should be lasting. The opinion of the patients (our target population) will be decisive in building an optimized programme that will suit them the best. In conclusion, the protocol and the qualitative findings of the present study validate the rationale for conducting a fully powered randomized trial to demonstrate the potential added value of shared meditation and how it improves well-being by promoting bridge-building between cancer patients, health professionals and others.Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov. NCT04410185. Registered on June 1, 2020.

Shared meditation involving cancer patients, health professionals and third persons is relevant and improves well-being: IMPLIC pilot study.

BACKGROUND: Alleviating suffering and improving quality of life are universally shared goals. In this context, we implemented a pilot study to assess the feasibility and acceptability of a mindfulness intervention in the form of meditation involving together cancer patients, health professionals, and third persons. METHODS: Two groups of 15 participants equally composed of patients, health professionals and third persons were constituted. A dedicated programme on mindfulness and compassion was constructed, including 12 weekly sessions of 1.5 h and a half-day retreat. Adherence and satisfaction with the programme were evaluated. All participants completed questionnaires on perceived stress, quality of life, mindfulness, empathy, and self-efficacy. Burnout was assessed in health professionals. RESULTS: Shared meditation was feasible as 70% of participants attended ≥ 80% of the 13 meditation sessions. Satisfaction with the programme was high (median satisfaction score: 9.1 out of 10) and all participants expressed positive attitudes towards shared meditation and a benefit on their global quality of life. Participants reported significant improvement in stress (p < 0.001), global quality of life (p = 0.004), self-efficacy (p < 0.001), and mindfulness skills (p < 0.001) from baseline to post-programme. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated the feasibility of a shared dedicated meditation programme in terms of participation and acceptability of participants. The measured benefits observed among participants furthermore justify the interest of a subsequent randomized study aiming to demonstrate the potential added value of shared meditation by promoting bridge-building between cancer patients, health professionals and others. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov. NCT04410185 . Registered on June 1, 2020.

Meditation involving people with cancer, medical staff and witnesses: a pilot study exploring improvement in wellness and connectedness.

INTRODUCTION: Mindfulness meditation is likely to promote better management of stress, pain and negative emotions. We propose to address the benefit of meditation in an open setting associating people with cancer (target population), medical staff and witnesses (neither patient nor medical staff). This study aims (1) to evaluate the effects of meditation on wellness improvement and (2) to identify criteria and modalities for a subsequent randomised study. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: We propose a longitudinal pilot study consisting of a non-randomised experimental preintervention/postintervention survey. The intervention consists in delivering a meditation programme (12 weekly meditation sessions of 1.5 hours each), specifically adapted to our target population and addressing our research hypothesis in an open setting involving people with cancer, medical staff and witnesses (equally distributed in two groups of 15 participants). The main objective is to evaluate participants' adherence to the programme. The effects of meditation will be evaluated on stress, quality of life, feeling of personal effectiveness, on the development of mindfulness and empathy, and on satisfaction and perception of a change in quality of life. We will also measure the putative added value of 'meditating together'. This study is expected to allow validating the evaluation tools and refining the modalities of the workshops. We expect to demonstrate the evolution that this meditation-based intervention induces in the participants. We aim to promote bridge-building, between patients, medical staff but also others. In this way, one's own suffering may be understood in the light of others' suffering, thereby promoting the sense of otherness and giving insights into 'living better with'. This exploratory study will investigate the relevance of this hypothesis, which could then be explored by a randomised study. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The protocol was approved by the local ethics committee (Comité de Protection des Personnes Est II). Trial findings will be published in peer-reviewed journals. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT04410185.