OBJECTIVE: Live-remote exercise interventions, supervised by exercise professionals in a home-based setting, could potentially enhance exercise accessibility for cancer survivors, yet research on their perspectives is limited. This study explored cancer survivors\' experience of exercise within the context of a live-remote exercise intervention, to understand factors influencing exercise engagement.
METHODS: Four online focus groups with, in total, 22 breast, prostate, and colorectal cancer survivors were conducted between March and June 2023. These individuals had participated in a 12-week live-remote exercise intervention. The semi-structured discussions were transcribed verbatim and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis with an abductive approach. The Capability, Opportunity, Motivation model of Behaviour (COM-B) served as a supportive framework.
RESULTS: Nine themes were identified and mapped onto COM-B domains (capability, opportunity, motivation). Factors influencing cancer survivors\' exercise engagement included exercise readiness following cancer treatment, bringing exercise closer, in capable hands, peer support through shared experience, life factors as hurdles or support, exercise as an integral component of cancer treatment, caring for myself and others after me, the positive impact of exercise exceeding expectations, and getting into the habit.
CONCLUSIONS: Identifying factors shaping exercise engagement, these findings emphasise live-remote\'s potential benefit in overcoming barriers and fostering participation. Supervised by professionals, it offered psychosocial and exercise support, facilitating the integration of exercise into daily life.
CONCLUSIONS: Elucidating key factors for exercise engagement within a live-remote context is essential for developing and implementing live-remote exercise interventions to ensure accessible, integrated exercise for optimal post-treatment well-being for cancer survivors.

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. The landscape of postgraduate education in a family medicine residency changed abruptly with the onset of the pandemic in March 2020. The early weeks and months of the pandemic have highlighted some short-fallings in virtual supervision that were not anticipated based upon our previous ways of teaching. In order to support the essential components of family medicine postgraduate teaching, curricular and program structural changes are required (which will likely translate into further iterative improvements). This opinion piece highlights some early changes in our large Canadian Family Medicine Residency Program, combining our early reflections on virtual supervision, the practicalities of on-the-ground teaching, and the existing concepts from the literature supporting effective medical teaching.

BACKGROUND: Geopolitical and socioeconomic challenges limit faculty development and clinical teaching in Palestine and many other developing countries. The first, and still only, Family Medicine (FM) residency program is a four-year program based out of An-Najah University in the West Bank. Training in primary care clinics occurs in the final two years and there are many challenges to adequate supervision in the clinical setting that were exacerbated during the pandemic. To improve the readiness for practice skills of 13 Palestinian FM residents a three-month tutorial program was organized in 2020. A nongovernmental organization (NGO) that has worked to support Family Medicine development in the region engaged experienced British and American General Practitioners trained as tutors to offer online tutorials. We examined the program as a case study to understand the factors that facilitated or impaired a positive virtual learning environment in a middle/low income country.
METHODS: The tutors and residents were divided into groups and met virtually between June and September 2020. Evaluations and session reports collected during the program, the text of an online chat, and responses to an online survey two years later were collected. Using thematic analysis techniques, we evaluated the value for the residents at the time and two years later and identified factors that facilitated or impaired a positive virtual learning environment.
RESULTS: Themes of knowledge, skills, attitudes, cultural disconnects, and tutorial logistics emerged. The group with the most stable tutor pairing, including one Arabic-speaker familiar with the context, was the most engaged. The all-female group formed a chat group to share real-time case questions during clinical practice and focused on skills (e.g. conducting a thorough medication review) and attitudes (e.g. open to sharing and discussing uncertainties). Other groups were less cohesive.
CONCLUSIONS: Transnational tutorials that focused on clinical thinking and decision-making skills were most successful when the tutorial pair was stable, offered familiarity with the language and addressed cultural differences. Intrinsic factors such as lacking the motivation to participate and extrinsic factors such as unstable internet and rolling electric cuts, and clinical structures that made applying new skills challenging were more difficult to address but must be considered.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, new challenges are presented in clinical research settings to increase exercise levels, particularly in vulnerable populations such as cancer survivors. While in-person supervised exercise is an effective format to improve patient-reported outcomes and physical function for cancer survivors, the COVID-19 pandemic limited this form of exercise as a feasible option within research and cancer care. As such, exercise oncology interventions were adapted to home-based instruction. In this review, we examine the current evidence of exercise interventions in cancer populations during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. We identified that group-based virtually supervised home-based exercise was the most used format among exercise oncology interventions during the pandemic. Preliminary results support feasibility and effectiveness of this emerging exercise setting in cancer survivors; however, it needs to be further investigated in adequately designed larger trials. Additionally, we provide recommendations and perspective for the implementation of virtually supervised home-based exercise.