Breast cancer patients' return to work (B-CARE): protocol of a longitudinal mixed-methods study aiming to explore medical and occupational rehabilitation of patients with breast cancer in Germany.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Hiltrop, Kati Heidkamp, Paula Kowalski, Christoph Ernstmann, Nicole
Copyright Year	2019
Abstract	IntroductionIn recent years, research has been done on determinants of return to work (RTW) in cancer survivors and their long-term work outcomes. Nevertheless, little is known about the survivors’ evaluation of these outcomes in terms of job satisfaction and voluntariness. Hence, B-CARE aims at filling the research gap by providing a longitudinal cohort study investigating medical and occupational rehabilitation including an evaluation by breast cancer survivors.Methods and analysisA mixed-methods approach, combining a quantitative survey with qualitative semi-structured interviews, is used to study breast cancer survivors 5–6 years after diagnosis. These data will be linked to data from prior waves of patients during hospitalisation and 10 and 40 weeks after hospital discharge as well as routine data from the German Statutory Pension Insurance Scheme and German Cancer Society if available. The actual survey focuses on determinants of medical rehabilitation use, RTW, subsequent employment patterns post care as well as the voluntariness of and satisfaction with job changes.Ethics and disseminationA positive vote from the ethics committee of the Medical Faculty of the University of Bonn has been obtained. Data protection regulations will be adhered to for all handled data. Personal identifiers of participants will be pseudonymised. Dissemination strategies include a workshop to discuss results among stakeholders such as representatives of the German Statutory Pension Insurance Scheme, social workers and self-help groups.Trial registration numberGerman Clinical Trials Register (DRKS00016982); Pre-results.
Journal	BMJ Open
Volume Number	9
PubMed Central reference number	PMC7008453
Issue Number	12
PubMed reference number	31874892
e-ISSN	20446055
DOI	10.1136/bmjopen-2019-033533
Language	English
Publisher	BMJ Publishing Group
Publisher Date	2019-12-23
Publisher Place	London
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2019. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.
Subject Keyword	breast tumours quality in health care return to work medical rehabilitation mixed methods
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Medicine