Bridging the Gap: A Quality Improvement Initiative to Enhance Interoception Resources for Pediatric Oncology OTs

Chemotherapy administered to children and youth diagnosed with pediatric cancers may induce side effects such as pain, fatigue, anxiety, and other distressing symptoms that could impact the ability to meet occupational needs and desires in daily functioning. The occupational therapy discipline incorporates mindfulness strategies to target these symptoms for increased body awareness in children with cancer, though interoception’s role within the pediatric oncology population is obscure. Furthermore, there are implicated demands described in the literature for more established pediatric oncology rehabilitation programs to attend to the specific needs of the population and to advocate for occupational therapy’s role in the emerging practice area for streamlined service delivery. This capstone project executed a quality improvement initiative at the Children’s Medical Center of Summerlin Hospital, which has a pediatric oncology rehabilitation program, with efforts to add to the site’s resources by providing interoception-based materials that may guide practice and enhance OT service delivery for their pediatric oncology population. The site’s therapy department had an existing pediatric resource binder, which this capstone project intended to expand through the addition of interoceptive resources. The capstone student collected feedback to determine if the resources added were accessible in the binder, relevant to the site’s pediatric oncology caseload, and clinically usable to inform treatment and care. The quality improvement initiative overall received positive feedback for all three core themes, aligning with the project’s overall goal to promote clinical reasoning with evidence-based practice when delivering occupational therapy services to the emerging practice of pediatric oncology.