It ’s Not Always Easy: Cancer Survivorship Care in Primary Care Settings

AbstractBy 2040, an anticipated 26.1 million people with a history of cancer will be part of the healthcare system. The purpose of this study was to explore Missouri-based non-oncology clinicians ’ perspectives on caring for patients with a history of cancer to identify needs of rural-based clinicians to optimize their patients’ survivorship care. Using an interpretive qualitative descriptive approach, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 17 non-oncology clinicians. We encouraged clinicians to discuss their approach to caring for patients with a history of cancer and invited them to talk about what might help them increase their knowledge of survivorship care best practices. Through interpretive qualitative descriptive analysis methods including first level coding and const ant comparison, we found there is consensus that cancer survivorship care is important; however, training that now guides our clinicians occurred mostly during residency, if at all. Clinicians relied on previous patient encounters and oncology notes combined with their patients’ personal account o f treatment history to inform the best next steps. Clinicians expressed strong interest in having a simple protocol of their patient’s treatment with prompts of known long-term cancer treatment–related effects and a patient-centric follow-up monitoring schedule (mandatory vs recommended vs optio nal). Clinicians expressed interest in educational opportunities about cancer care and ability for cu...
Source: Journal of Cancer Education - Category: Cancer & Oncology Source Type: research