I Seminário Internacional de Pesquisa em Saúde - II Simpósio de Pesquisa em Enfermagem do Distrito Federal.

Introduction: cancer affects more than 14 million people each year, being one of the leading causes of disability and mortality worldwide. When the breast area is submitted to radiation therapy (RT), the most common effects are pain, skin changes, mobility restrictions, local sensory alteration, and fatigue. These effects, if not manage properly, may reduce the quality of life of cancer patients and may lead to the treatment discontinuation. Therefore, promoting knowledge and guidelines for symptom management remain a high priority for patients and a challenge for health professionals, due to the need to handle side effects in a population with a life-threatening disease. Printed materials are important strategies for supporting educative activities, since they help the individual to assimilate and understand the amount of information transmitted. However, before providing a professional tool for use, it is indispensable to test it in order to know its effectiveness. Objective: to validate the content and appearance of an educative manual for breast cancer patients undergoing RT. Method: descriptive methodological research, in which the Theory of Psychometrics was used for the validation process. A minimum agreement rate (AR) of 80% was considered to guarantee the validation of the material. The data were collected from October to December 2017, by means of two assessments tools, constructed in the form of a Likert scale, with five levels of understanding. These instruments addressed different aspects of the evaluation, in view of two different groups of participants: 17 experts in the theme area of the educative manual, and by 12 women that received RT previously to treat breast cancer. The manual was titled “Orientation Manual: radiation therapy in breast”, and was focused on breast cancer patients attended at the Department of Oncology of the Brasília University Hospital (UNACON/HUB). The research project was submitted to the Research Ethics Committee at the School of Health Sciences of the University of Brasília (CAAE: 24592213.1.0000.0030). Results: only two items of the assessment tool for the experts, one related to the manual's ability to promote behavioral and attitude changes and the other related to the extent of its use for other health services, obtained AR <80%, and were reformulated based on the participants' suggestions and in the literature. All other items were considered appropriate and/or complete appropriate in the three blocks proposed for the experts: objectives - 89%, structure and form - 93%, and relevance - 93%; and good and/or very good in the five blocks of analysis proposed for patients: objectives - 100%, organization - 100%, writing style - 100%, appearance - 100%, and motivation. Discussion: experts are not sure about the material's ability to change behavior and attitude in isolation, given the important role of nurses during nursing consultations. However, the study objectives to provide a validated educative manual as a support strategy to be used as guideline for subsidizing nursing care to breast cancer patients undergoing RT. Therefore, the manual is a complementary tool to the educative follow-up done by the nurses, and should be used concomitantly to their professional work, and not in isolation. Besides that, although the manual has been considered accessible to several sociocultural groups, each health institution has its specifics arising from routine, planning techniques and, therefore, care related to RT, what may render its applicability infeasible without adaptations. Hence, the manual should be adapted according to each service so that it can be used in other institutions that differ in treatment and/or population in relation to UNACON/HUB. Conclusion: the appearance and content validation of the educative manual proposed were attended to. The educative manual was considered relevant and pertinent and may contribute to the understanding of the therapeutic process by breast cancer patients during RT, as well as support clinical practice through the nursing consultation.