Integrating Palliative Care Into Self-Management of Breast Cancer

The purpose of this study is to test a psycho-educational intervention, Managing Cancer Care: A Personal Guide (MCC), that is intended to improve patients' knowledge of palliative care and to facilitate its timely integration into self-management of their breast cancer. The MCC will be tested with patients with Stage I-IV breast cancer at baseline, one, and three months following enrollment. The intervention group will receive the MCC, and the attention-control group will receive a symptom management toolkit. Participants' family caregivers will also be enrolled to provide information on patients' self-management. Investigators hypothesize that users of MCC, as compared to attention-control participants, will demonstrate improved knowledge, feelings, and behaviors related to self-management of their cancer care. This innovative research can help to establish palliative care as a mainstay of self-management interventions that target serious illnesses.