Poster Presentation 2025 Joint Meeting of the COSA ASM and IPOS Congress

Development and evaluation of an innovative, evidence-based online toolkit for implementing prehabilitation for patients having major cancer surgery: The Prep-4-Cancer Surgery Toolkit.  (123116)

Christina Prickett 1 2 , Rajib Ahmed 1 3 , Michael Barton 4 , Anna Beaumont 1 5 , Hollie Bevans 6 , Jessica Crowe 1 , Linda Denehy 1 2 , Ben deZoete 1 , Lara Edbrooke 1 2 , Maria Ftanou 1 2 , Maddison Gray 4 , Hilmy Ismail 1 , Fiona Lynch 1 7 , Sharyn McGowan 8 , Fiona McKinnon 9 , Lisa Nguyen 1 , Bernhard Riedel 1 , Catherine Sinton 1 , Anya Traill 1 , Jenelle Loeliger 1 10 , Alicia Martin 1
  1. Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
  2. University of Melbourne, Melbourne
  3. Alfred Hospital, Melbourne
  4. Western & Central Melbourne Integrated Cancer Services , Melbourne
  5. Royal Melbourne Hospital, Melbourne
  6. Western Health, Melbourne
  7. Barwon Health, Geelong
  8. Bendigo Health, Bendigo
  9. St Vincent's Hospital , Melbourne
  10. Deakin University, Melbourne

Background: Growing evidence supports prehabilitation as preparation for major cancer surgery with demonstrated reduction in post-operative complications and improved functional and psychological outcomes post-surgery. However, limited evidence-based information is publicly available to support services developing new programs. This project aimed to co-design and develop an online evidence-based multidisciplinary cancer surgery prehabilitation toolkit and evaluate its usefulness and acceptability.

Methods: Three online co-design workshops with consumers, health professionals and key stakeholders (N=22) were conducted to iteratively develop the content, structure and functionality of the toolkit. Health professionals at three Victorian health services were then invited to evaluate the resource via survey feedback. The survey questions were guided by the Theoretical Framework of Acceptability (TFA) (Sekhon et al., 2022). Nineteen health professionals from Bendigo Health, St Vincent’s Hospital and Western Health (N=19) responded to the evaluation survey. Eighty-six percent of respondents reported the resource was acceptable and seventy-four percent reported the resource improved their confidence and would improve their work with patients preparing for major cancer surgery.

Impact on practice: The Prep-4-Cancer Surgery toolkit has been finalised and provides patient-facing resources and information for health professionals on implementing evidence-based multidisciplinary prehabilitation. Core modules include medical, nursing, exercise, nutrition and psychology materials. The evaluation supports the usefulness and acceptability of the toolkit. It is hoped increased access to freely available evidenced-based resources will support improvements in quality and equity of care. For patients, improved access to evidence-based prehabilitation would ultimately lead to improved, physical, functional and psychological outcomes.

Discussion: The Prep-4-Cancer Surgery website is due to be made publicly available in August 2025. Further evaluation of the patient and clinician resources is required following a period of public release. Expanding the toolkit to include culturally and linguistic diverse resources will be an important future consideration.

Key words: Prehabilitation, exercise, nutrition, psychology, cancer surgery

  1. Sekhon M, Cartwright M, Francis JJ. Development of a theory-informed questionnaire to assess the acceptability of healthcare interventions. BMC Health Serv Res. 2022 Mar 1;22(1):279. doi: 10.1186/s12913-022-07577-3. PMID: 35232455; PMCID: PMC8887649.