Iris Kanera

72 Chapter 3 in other research projects, lack of time or excessive workload, too few staff members to recruit participants, or insufficient number of patients who met the inclusion criteria. Creating this network was a very time consuming process; it easily could take more than half a year from the moment of contacting a representative of a clinic until staff members began recruiting participants. Next, maintaining contact with multiple hospitals required good planning. To keep the staff members involved, we send out monthly newsletters with updates of the research project. Also, we regularly send thank-you cards. To conclude, timely planning of program adoption and implementation is essential. Step 6: Planning for evaluation In the final step, a plan for the effect and process evaluation of the intervention was developed. While the effect evaluation describes the differences in outcomes between the participants who were and were not exposed to the KNW, the process evaluation aims to get insight into the use and appreciation of the intervention (Bartholomew et al., 2011). For the evaluation of the KNW, an RCT comparing the intervention group with a waiting list control group was conducted. The RCT is approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of the Atrium Medical Centre (NL41445.096.12) and is registered in the Dutch Trial Register (NTR3375). Participants Patients were eligible for participation if they were 18 years or older, they had been diagnosed with any cancer type, primary treatment (surgery, chemotherapy, and/or radiation therapy) had been completed successfully for at least six weeks but no more than 52 weeks, there was no sign of recurrence in the latest follow-up visit, they were able to read and speak Dutch, and there was no serious medical, psychiatric, or cognitive illness that would interfere with participation. Computer literacy was not an explicit inclusion criterion, since the hospital staff was not able to screen for this. We expected that patients who were not computer literate would not participate in the study. Design and procedure Staff members of 21 hospitals (see Step 5) recruited patients from November 2013 through June 2014. The recruitment period varied per hospital. Patients were selected either during follow-up visits to the hospital or from reviews of patients’files. Oncologists, research nurses, and nurse practitioners from the outpatient clinics internal medicine, oncology, gynecology, urology, and breast clinics invited patients who met the inclusion criteria to participate by giving them an information package during a follow-up visit or sending the package to them following review of the patient’s files. The information package included: (1) a letter