Exploring patient experiences and acceptability of group vs. individual acupuncture for Cancer-related pain: a qualitative study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Individual acupuncture (AP) is a safe and effective treatment for cancer-related pain and other symptoms in cancer survivors. However, access to individual AP is limited, and costs can be prohibitive. Group AP could be a more cost-effective alternative as it is less expensive and non-inferior to individual AP for pain relief. Despite growing evidence in favour of group AP, patient acceptability and experience of group AP in cancer patients is relatively unknown. This exploratory study sought to compare patient experiences and acceptability of group versus individual AP in cancer patients. METHODS: Semi-structured, open-ended, in-depth interviews were conducted in a subset of 11 cancer patients enrolled in a randomized non-inferiority trial of group vs. individual AP for cancer pain. Participants for this study were recruited via purposive sampling, aiming for diversity in age, sex, education, employment, cancer types, and treatment arms. Data was analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. RESULTS: Two major themes were identified: a) overall experience of AP treatment b) value of AP. Participants across both treatment arms acknowledged improvement in pain, quality of sleep, mood and fatigue. Participants in the group AP arm reported a significant increase in perceived social support, while participants in the individual arm valued privacy and one-on-one interaction with the acupuncturist. Although some participants in the group arm had privacy-related concerns before the commencement of the program, these concerns waned after a few AP sessions. Participants across both the treatment arms reported cordial clinician-patient relationship with the acupuncturist. Willingness to pursue AP treatment in the future was comparable across both the treatment arms and was limited by out-of-pocket costs. CONCLUSION: Patient acceptability and experience of treatment in group AP was on par with individual AP. Group AP may further augment perceived social support among patients and privacy concerns, if any, subside after a few sessions. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov ( NCT03641222 ). Registered 10 July 2018 - Retrospectively registered.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.019 | 0.029 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".