Footnotes

• Contributors PD and GF contributed to the research design and editing of the manuscript. PD collected the data, and generated the manuscript.

• Funding PD was funded by Cancer Care Nova Scotia through a Norah Stephen Oncology Scholar Award administered by the Beatrice Hunter Cancer Research Institute. This project was awarded the 2012 K R Leblanc Award for Healing and the Arts and the 2013 Dr J D Hatcher Prize for Medical Research from Dalhousie University. Ed’s Story: the Dragon Chronicles was commissioned by and developed from research led by GF with funding support from Dalhousie University’s Medical Education Research and Development Fund, Department of Paediatrics Endowment Fund, Norah Stephen Oncology Scholars Award, Ina Cummings Bursary-Nova Scotia Hospice Palliative Care Association and the Archibald Gold-Headed Cane Award for Medical Humanities.

• Competing interests None declared.

• Ethics approval Dalhousie University REB Study no 2011-2462.

• Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

• Data sharing statement In accordance with university and REB protocols at our institution, anonymised survey feedback from study participants has been retained on a secure university-based server. No study participants agreed to open data sharing, unless their feedback was selected for use by the research team as a representative quote to illustrate or support analysis or findings. Quotes from the raw data that supported or illustrated the findings were presented in the study. Other raw data may be made available to researchers upon request via the authors, subject to university REB and institution restrictions.