Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

Young adults diagnosed with cancer may be at an increased risk of infertility as a result of their cancer treatment. Fertility in survivorship is of great importance to many cancer patients and infertility can lead to lower quality of life. While fertility risks should be discussed with all patients, clinicians report having low levels of knowledge on the available fertility options and resources available for patients. Clinicians require more education on fertility and resources to help them feel comfortable raising this topic with their patients. To help fertility discussions, our team created a decision aid for young adults with breast cancer, called the Begin Exploring Fertility Options, Risks and Expectations (BEFORE) decision aid. This decision aid is being disseminated to 21 sites across Canada. To assist with the dissemination of the aid, we host a webinar for nurses and support staff on fertility in young adults with breast cancer and provide an introduction to the BEFORE decision aid. Due to the positive response from the webinar and BEFORE DA, we recognize the need to broaden the content and provide this education to more clinicians. We aim to revise the webinar to include the fertility options, risks and available resources for all young adults with any cancer type and disseminate it more widely to clinicians. The webinar will be hosted through the Canadian Association of Nurses in Oncology national webinar platform allowing nurses and other interested clinicians from across Canada to attend. A post-webinar survey will assess webinar attendees intended behaviour changes, current fertility care practices and needs when discussing fertility, enabling our team to identify new initiatives that are required to enhance the fertility care provided to YA with cancer in Canada.