Background: Survivorship care plans (SCPs) for posttreatment cancer survivors are recommended by leading health organizations, yet many survivors are not receiving SCPs. This results in suboptimal survivorship care.
Objectives: To understand survivors’ perspectives on how having an SCP would have changed their survivorship experience and to provide insight into the potential of SCPs to meet survivor information needs.
Methods: In LIVESTRONG’s 2014-2015 Surveys of Cancer Survivors, we asked survivors who reported they had not received an SCP to comment on how an SCP might have changed their posttreatment experience. We conducted a qualitative thematic analysis of respondents’ (n = 158) open-ended responses.
Results: Respondents who did not receive an SCP felt they would have benefited from receiving a care plan. Emerging themes suggest that an SCP would have improved emotional experience (n = 54), increased knowledge of what to expect (eg, long-term side effects) (n = 56), or improved their quality of care and their health following treatment completion (n = 20). A subset of respondents (n = 23) indicated they were unsure how an SCP would have changed their experience, if at all.
Cancer survivors’ perspectives on the potential impact of a posttreatment survivorship care plan
Soloe, C. S., Treiman, K. A., Narayan, A., Rechis, R., Tzeng, J. P-J., Squiers, L. B., ... Bann, C. M. (2019). Cancer survivors’ perspectives on the potential impact of a posttreatment survivorship care plan. Journal of Oncology Navigation & Survivorship, 10(4).
Abstract
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