Psychosocial Care Of Cancer Survivors

Cancer care today often provides state-of-the-science biomedical treatment, but fails to address the psychological and social (psychosocial) problems associated with the illness. This failure can compromise the effectiveness of health care and thereby adversely affect the health of cancer patients. Psychological and social problems created or exacerbated by cancer-including depression and other emotional problems; lack of information or skills needed to manage the illness; lack of transportation or other resources; and disruptions in work, school, and family life-cause additional suffering, weaken adherence to prescribed treatments, and threaten patients' return to health. Today, it is not possible to deliver high-quality cancer care without using existing approaches, tools, and resources to address patients' psychosocial health needs. All patients with cancer and their families should expect and receive cancer care that ensures the provision of appropriate psychosocial health services. Cancer Care for the Whole Patient recommends actions that oncology providers, health policy makers, educators, health insurers, health planners, researchers and research sponsors, and consumer advocates should undertake to ensure that this standard is met.

Medical and Psychosocial Care of the Cancer Survivor is a comprehensive clinical reference for care of the cancer survivor from early post-treatment through long term care. Expertly written by thirty-five renowned oncologists and other specialists from the Yale Cancer Center, this resource covers psychosocial sequelae of cancer therapy epidemiology, pathogenesis, and risk reduction, medical sequalae of cancer therapy, and patient vignettes.

Currently there is a crisis occurring in healthcare involving clinician burnout, emotional exhaustion, lack of inspiration, and loss of personal meaning. For clinicians caring for cancer survivors, these feelings are aggravated by facing the largely unknown realm of survivorship and the issues it brings to patients and clinicians alike. As the number of cancer survivors grows, psychosocial oncology clinicians are increasingly called upon to work with the long-term aftermath of a cancer diagnosis, which requires the capacity to address the emotional and psychosocial issues that are not part of a traditional medical education. Clinicians have plenty of textbooks, but fewer hands-on, interactive guides that teach these kinds of experiential lessons that can be used in their day-to-day work lives. This accessible workbook offers a way to think about these important ideas while providing a structure to implement humanistic clinical practices. Clinical skills, communication tools, empathy as a learned capacity, cultural humility, reflective and mindful exercises designed to increase relationship skills-all of these depend upon this mode of experiential learning, as it teaches useful practices and solutions in order to increase the efficacy and satisfaction of clinical work with cancer survivors and their communities. Psychosocial Care of Cancer Survivors: A Clinician's Guide and Workbook for Providing Wholehearted Care is a clinical resource for healthcare practitioners that presents person-centered care as an antidote to the distress both patients and clinicians face in cancer survivorship. It addresses questions of how to bring a humanistic approach and quality attention to the growing needs of patients in the post-treatment phase of a cancer diagnosis. As a workbook, it's both a guide and an applicable resource for daily clinical practice. It provides a needed structure for clinicians to help them reconnect with the meaningful aspects of their work. Designed for busy psychosocial oncology clinicians who may feel disconnected but don't fully understand why, this workbook addresses the need for a humanistic and pragmatic approach to the psychosocial issues that arise in their work with patients. Based on personal interviews with clinicians, written feedback from clinicians, and research describing the formidable demands facing professionals working in cancer healthcare, as well as the dangers of burnout, this is highly practical, interactive guide addresses the emotional and psychological concerns of both patient and clinician. This workbook will be a much-needed resource for humanizing cancer survivorship care. The book is presented in two parts: - Part I focuses on skillful means for providing humanistic patient care. - Part II offers clinicians pragmatic structures and methods they can start using with patients right away, and provides a humanistic clinical framework that benefits them both personally and professionally. Clinicians will gain: - Clinical skills vital to forming healing clinical relationships: - Communication tools to enhance effective collaboration, such as personal and professional boundaries, the essentials of a healing relationship, stages of the clinical interview, collegial collaboration. - Exercises designed for personal reflection and the implementation of the abovementioned clinical skills and communication tools. - Useful practices and solutions to increase the efficacy and satisfaction of their work. Written from the perspective of a clinician-survivor, Psychosocial Care of Cancer Survivors is about the healing power of relationship for both patient and practitioner as they negotiate the complex world of cancer survivorship.

The development of this inaugural Handbook of Oncology Social Work: Psychosocial Care for People With Cancer provides a repository of the scope of oncology social workers' clinical practice, education, research, policy and program leadership in the psychosocial care of people with cancer and their families. It focuses on the unique synergy of social work perspectives, values, knowledge, and skills with the psychosocial needs of cancer patients, their families, and the health care systems in which they are treated. It addresses both the science and art of psychosocial care and identifies the increasing specialization of oncology social work related to its unique knowledge base, skills, role, and the progressive complexity of psychosocial challenges for patients with cancer. This Handbook equips the reader with all that we know today in oncology social work about patient and family centered care, distress screening, genetics, survivorship, care coordination, sociocultural and economic diversity, legal and ethical matters, clinical work with adults living with cancer, cancer across the lifespan, their caregivers and families, pediatrics, loss and grief, professional career development, leadership, and innovation. Our hope is that in reading this Handbook you will identify new areas where each of you can leave your mark as innovators and change agents in our evolving field of practice.

In Meeting Psychosocial Needs of Women with Breast Cancer, the National Cancer Policy Board of the Institute of Medicine examines the psychosocial consequences of the cancer experience. The book focuses specifically on breast cancer in women because this group has the largest survivor population (over 2 million) and this disease is the most extensively studied cancer from the standpoint of psychosocial effects. The book characterizes the psychosocial consequences of a diagnosis of breast cancer, describes psychosocial services and how they are delivered, and evaluates their effectiveness. It assesses the status of professional education and training and applied clinical and health services research and proposes policies to improve the quality of care and quality of life for women with breast cancer and their families. Because cancer of the breast is likely a good model for cancer at other sites, recommendations for this cancer should be applicable to the psychosocial care provided generally to individuals with cancer. For breast cancer, and indeed probably for any cancer, the report finds that psychosocial services can provide significant benefits in quality of life and success in coping with serious and life-threatening disease for patients and their families.

Identifying and Addressing the Needs of Adolescents and Young Adults with Cancer is the summary of a workshop convened by the Institute of Medicine's National Cancer Policy Forum in July 2013 to facilitate discussion about gaps and challenges in caring for adolescent and young adult cancer patients and potential strategies and actions to improve the quality of their care. The workshop featured invited presentations from clinicians and other advocates working to improve the care and outcomes for the adolescent and young adult population with cancer. Cancer is the leading disease-related cause of death in adolescents and young adults. Each year nearly 70,000 people between the ages of 15 and 39 are diagnosed with cancer, approximately 8 times more than children under age 15. This population faces a variety of unique short- and long-term health and psychosocial issues, such as difficulty reentering school, the workforce, or the dating scene; problems with infertility; cardiac, pulmonary, or other treatment repercussions; and secondary malignancies. Survivors are also at increased risk for psychiatric conditions such as anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and suicide and may have difficulty acquiring health insurance and paying for needed care. Identifying and Addressing the Needs of Adolescents and Young Adults with Cancer discusses a variety of topics important to adolescent and young adult patients with cancer, including the ways in which cancers affecting this group differ from cancers in other age groups and what that implies about the best treatments for these cancer patients. This report identifies gaps and challenges in providing optimal care to adolescent and young adult patients with cancer and to discuss potential strategies and actions to address them.

This ground-breaking clinical reference provides a comprehensive perspective of the multiple issues facing cancer survivors, ranging from early post-treatment through long-term care. Clear, clinically practical chapters written by experts in the field concentrate on multi-dimensional issues that confront cancer survivors. Divided into four, focused sections—overview of survivorship, medical care, psychosocial care, and epidemiologic—this book is evidence-based and uses case examples and illustrations throughout to add to the understanding of the material and its application to the individual patient. Primary care physicians, nurses, oncologists, hematologists, students of medicine, and survivorship researchers will all find this to be a valuable asset in setting the standard of care in the field of cancer survivorship.

This extraordinary resource celebrates and expands on Dr. David Spiegel's discovery that a shared intimacy with mortality creates very different concerns in the patient from those that apply in conventional settings. Spiegel and Classen introduce mental health professionals to the awareness as well as the tools they will need to facilitate groups coping with existential crises. The result is a model for helping that actually helps.