The 66 hour program encompasses mindfulness training, yoga, moderate exercise, nutrition, naturopathic self-help strategies, cognitive restructuring and acupuncture for the management of side effects caused by chemotherapy.

The mind-body-medicine group program focuses on support in coping with the disease, in lifestyle modification and in reduction of chemotherapy induced side effects. The self-contained modules of the mind-body-medicine group program can be followed in an individual order, to allow adoption to different chemotherapy concepts and continued access is possible. Patients can join in the group program eleven times for six hours each visit. They participate in every one of the eleven modules once.

Besides the global quality of life subscale, this instrument assesses five functional domains of quality of life: physical, role, emotional, cognitive, and social function. Symptom scales further assess fatigue, pain, nausea and vomiting, dyspnea, insomnia, loss of appetite, constipation, diarrhea, and financial difficulties. Scores of all subscales range from 0 to 100, while a higher score represents a better level of functioning or a worse amount of symptoms.

It measures the 2 dimensions anxiety and depression. Scores range from 0 to 21 with higher values indicate higher distress. Values of >8 indicate potential subclinical anxiety or depressive disorders

BFI has been validated as a short and comprehensive instrument to assess severity of fatigue (three questions) and fatigue-related impairment (six questions) in cancer patients with a 9-item, 11-point rating scale. Higher scores on the BFI correspond to greater severity of fatigue / impairment through fatigue over the past 24 hours.

Perceived stress was assessed by the 10-item version of the PSS, rated for the past month on a 5-point rating scale. For the summed items (range from 0 to 40) a higher total score indicates greater stress.

Satisfaction was assessed at T1 by 5 questions regarding fulfilled expectations about the program contents, relevance for coping with cancer, social support of the group setting, transferring into everyday life, and recommendation of the program. Each question could be scored from 1=totally agree to 6=totally disagree.