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Primary care cancer lead clinicians (PCCLs) act strategically in primary care trusts (PCTs) in England to improve communication and understanding of cancer across primary and secondary care and provide a link between Cancer Networks and primary care. The aim is to evaluate the first three years of the initiative.

A postal questionnaire was sent to all PCT chief executives in all PCTs in England and some were passed on to other PCT managers for completion. The response rate was 61 per cent. PCT directors of public health were the largest group of respondents (29 per cent). Most (74 per cent) PCCLs were GPs and 22 per cent were nurses.

PCCLs were most likely to focus on palliative care and preventive services. Key achievements were identified as raising awareness of cancer, developing relationships and promoting primary care. The personal skills of the PCCLs were important as was support of colleagues at all levels. Lack of time was a major barrier to achievement, as was a lack of understanding of the role from others. Links with the Cancer Networks were being developed. About 85 per cent of managers wanted the role to continue.

The paper illustrates that PCCLs are at the forefront of improving cancer services in primary care. They are particularly important in view of the priority of reducing premature deaths and promotion of healthy lifestyles.

This review, which was created specifically for cancer care by reviewing the literature, was prepared to provide suggestions for determining the current difficulties in cancer care during COVID-19 outbreak and managing these difficulties. It is thought that this review can contribute to the identification of deficiencies related to the subject, to create interest in this issue in our country and in the world and to guide patients in the care during the COVID-19 pandemic process.

The literature search was carried out using the following electronic seven databases. Search terms used included: “COVID-19”, “management of cancer care” and “cancer care”. Articles meeting the following criteria were included in the current review: articles published in English, articles published in peer-reviewed journals and articles and guidelines published in 2020, articles suggesting management of cancer care during the COVID-19 outbreak.

The findings suggest that new guidelines need to be created to assess the level of problems in cancer treatment and in hospital, to respond appropriately with the best available resources during COVID-19 outbreak.

This paper seeks to provide suggestions for determining the current difficulties in cancer care during COVID-19 outbreak and managing these difficulties. By doing so, it is believed the suggestions presented will contribute significantly to the quality of cancer care during COVID-19 outbreak.

Health care organizational research should pay greater attention to the specific settings where health is practiced. An ethnographic account of humor, ritual and defiance is presented from 29 months spent in a private, concierge-type radiation oncology center. A thick description of the setting and interaction among center staff and patients is offered in an attempt to establish why qualitative research of health care settings is so important. Findings are compared to Ellingson’s work on health care setting. Humor, ritual and defiance have therapeutic value and deserve greater attention in cancer treatment centers and health care organizations more broadly. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

An ethnographic account of humor, ritual and defiance is presented from 29 months spent in a private, concierge-type radiation oncology center through thick description.

This study reinforces the literature on the value of institutionalizing humor and ritual to improve patients’ experience in cancer care given the dominance of large public institutions, most easily accessed by academic researchers. Suncoast Coast Radiation Center’s “institutionalized humor” is an important finding that should be examine further. Scholarship can also illuminate the use of ritual in settings where health care is practiced.

This study is limited to a particular research setting which is a private, concierge care radiation oncology treatment center in the Southeastern USA.

Cancer care centers should consider carefully institutionalizing humor and ritual into their daily practices. Further, patient defiance should be reinterpreted not as a patient deficiency but as a therapeutic coping mechanism by patients.

While nearly half of cancer care in the USA is offered in private, for-profit institutions, the vast majority of the understanding of cancer care comes only from non-profit and government-run institutions. Shining a light of these neglected cancer care settings will add to the understanding and the ability to improve the care offered to patients.

This is the first health ethnography in a concierge care, cancer care treatment setting. It tests the proposition that humor, ritual and defiance play an important role in a private concierge cancer care organization.

Introducing change is a difficult issue facing all health care systems. The use of various clinical governance levers can facilitate change in health care systems. The purpose of this paper is to define clinical governance levers, and to illustrate their use in a large-scale transformation.

The empirical analysis deals with the in-depth study of a specific case, which is the organizational model for Ontario’s cancer sector. The authors used a qualitative research strategy and drew the data from three sources: semi-structured interviews, analysis of documents, and non-participative observations.

From the results, the authors identified three phases and several steps in the reform of cancer services in this province. The authors conclude that a combination of clinical governance levers was used to transform the system. These levers operated at different levels of the system to meet the targeted objectives.

To exercise clinical governance, managers need to acquire new competencies. Mobilizing clinical governance levers requires in-depth understanding of the role and scope of clinical governance levers.

This study provides a better understanding of clinical governance levers. Clinical governance levers are used to implement an organizational environment that is conducive to developing clinical practice, as well as to act directly on practices to improve quality of care.

Cancer care is complex and an integrated cancer pathway involves many health professionals in a variety of care settings using many skills. The widely distributed and heterogeneous nature of the cancer workforce raises significant challenges with respect to professional development. Cancer Learning is a government-funded initiative designed to provide access to a wide range of quality online learning resources for all health care professionals involved in the care of cancer patients and their families. The purpose of this paper is to discuss these issues.

A multi-phase project, led by a consortium of national stakeholders in cancer care, informed the design, build, and deployment of Cancer Learning; an online, evidence based, information and learning portal to support professional development of health professionals across the continuum of cancer care in Australia. An action research approach allowed for an iterative process of ongoing dynamic evaluation and improvement of this workforce improvement resource.

The National Government Agency, Cancer Australia's Cancer Learning online hub has been supporting the professional development requirements of cancer care professionals since the site deployment in 2007. Since launch, site usage continues to grow and evaluations have been positive. Time constraints of health professionals continue to be a major barrier to sustained online learning participation.

This research recount of the development and implementation of an Australia first national online learning initiative highlights the rigorous approach undertaken for the delivery of a quality evidence-based resource for the professional development of all health professionals involved in the delivery of cancer care.

Knowledge is a key success factor in achieving competitive advantage. The purpose of this paper is to examine how mobile health technology facilitates knowledge management (KM) practices to enhance a public health service in an emerging economies context. Specifically, the acceptance of a knowledge-resource application by community health workers (CHWs) to deliver breast cancer health care in India, where resources are depleted, is explored.

Fieldwork activity conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with frontline CHWs, which were analysed using an interpretive inductive approach.

The application generates knowledge as a resource that signals quality health care and yields a positive reputation for the public health service. The CHW’s acceptance of technology enables knowledge generation and knowledge capture. The design facilitates knowledge codification and knowledge transfer of breast cancer information to standardise quality patient care.

KM insights are provided for the implementation of mobile health technology for frontline health-care professionals in an emerging economies context. The knowledge-resource application can deliver breast cancer care, in localised areas with the potential for wider contexts. The outcomes are valuable for policymakers, health service managers and KM practitioners in an emerging economies context.

The legacy of the mobile heath technology is the normalisation of breast cancer discourse and the technical up-skilling of CHWs.

First, this paper contributes three propositions to KM scholarship, in a public health care, emerging economies context. Second, via an interdisciplinary theoretical lens (signalling theory and technology acceptance model), this paper offers a novel conceptualisation to illustrate how a knowledge-resource application can shape an organisation’s KM to form a resource-based competitive advantage.

The Swedish health-care system currently implements cancer care pathways (CCPs) for better and more timely cancer diagnostics. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate and define “crowding out” effects associated with the CCP implementation.

A document study based on implementation reports and action plans from Swedish county councils (n = 21) and a case study in one county council were conducted. Qualitative data collection and analysis were used to acquire more knowledge about the “crowding out” effects associated with the CCP implementation.

Three effects discussed under “crowding out” were defined. The first effect, called the push-out effect, occurs when other patients have to wait for care longer in favour of CCP patients. Another effect is the inclusion effect, whereby “crowding out” is reduced for vulnerable patients due to the standardised procedures and criteria in the referral process. The final effect is the exclusion effect, where patients in need of cancer diagnostics are, for some reason, not referred to CCP. These patients are either not diagnosed at all or diagnosed outside CCP by a non-standard process, with the risk of longer waiting times.

“Crowding out” effects are an urgent topic related to CCP implementation. While these effects have been reported in international research studies, no shared definition has been established to describe them. The present paper creates a common base to measure the “crowding out” effects and support further development of CCPs to avoid the negative effects on waiting times.

The study aims to summarise the literature on cancer care pathways at the diagnostic and treatment phases. The objectives are to find factors influencing the delivery of cancer care pathways; to highlight any interrelating factors; to find gaps in the literature concerning areas of research; to summarise the strategies and recommendations implemented in the studies.

The study used a qualitative approach and developed a causal loop diagram to summarise the current literature on cancer care pathways, from screening and diagnosis to treatment. A total of 46 papers was finally included in the analysis, which highlights the recurring themes in the literature.

The study highlights the myriad areas of research applied to cancer care pathways. Factors influencing the delivery of cancer care pathways were classified into different albeit interrelated themes. These include access barriers to care, hospital emergency admissions, fast track diagnostics, delay in diagnosis, waiting time to treatment and strategies to increase system efficiency.

As far as the authors know, this is the first study to present a visual representation of the complex relationship between factors influencing the delivery of cancer care pathways.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the quality of life of patients with different types of cancer in Jordan and its relationship with nursing care.

An exploratory approach utilizing cross‐sectional design with a structured questionnaire, administered to patients face‐to‐face, with specific questions about demographic and health status and two standardized scales: Patients Satisfaction with Nursing Scale (NSNS), and Function of Living Index‐Cancer (FLIC) were used. The study sample comprised 156 patients with cancer who were hospitalized in two governmental hospitals in Amman and Karak and two university‐based hospitals in Amman and Irbid cities.

The sample of the study showed that the types of cancer distribution were close to the cancer distribution among the Jordanian population. The median age of the sample was 47 years with a range between 18 years and 80 years. Nearly two‐thirds of the participants perceived their current health as good. All variables in the regression equation (satisfaction with nursing care, health perception now, health in comparison with one year ago, and gender) have significantly explained a considerable amount of variance in the cancer patients' quality of life.

Using a quantitative approach alone to measure QoL is not sufficient to reflect all dimensions of a subjective phenomenon such as QoL. The study did not differentiate between patients according to severity of cancer and type of treatment.

Providing proper nursing care improves cancer patients' quality of life.

This study stemmed from: the assessing and identifying predictors of quality of life (QoL) as perceived by patients with cancer and not by the care‐providers; and highlighting the positive effect of nursing care on QoL for cancer patients.

HR leaders and corporate benefits managers must balance organizational costs with decisions about which new tools and treatments will be covered by their employee health insurance plans. Getting it right can mean the difference between life and death for cancer patients. Most HR leaders, however, are not experts in cancer treatment and do not know how to make sure their plan benefits do not create roadblocks to treatment.

A total of 295 people who were diagnosed with cancer from 2019 to 2022 participated in the 2023 CancerCare Biomarker Survey, which was conducted in January 2023.

CancerCare’s 2023 survey of cancer patients found that biomarker testing helped doctors tailor therapy for nearly all the patients (93%) whose cancers were tested over the past three years. Two in 10 cancer patients (20%) avoided unnecessary chemotherapy and/or radiation and one in 10 (10%) became eligible for a clinical trial because of biomarker testing.

Biomarker testing is a necessary tool in the advancing world of precision cancer treatment. Despite the significant and demonstrable benefits to surveyed patients, three out of 10 respondents (29%) who received biomarker testing did not have the test covered by their insurance. Some survey respondents reported that biomarker test coverage was originally denied and they had to fight to get it covered. Others had to find ways to pay out-of-pocket or seek financial assistance to cover the cost of the testing.

Unfortunately, health insurance plans often limit cancer patients’ access to recommended biomarker testing, impose burdensome prior authorization (PA) protocols or require unaffordable cost-sharing, which can prevent or delay cancer patients’ access to optimal treatments. PA, a significant source of roadblocks to timely testing and treatment, was required by a quarter (25%) of the cancer patients surveyed.

Biomarker testing is increasingly a health care equity issue and there are significant gaps in the rate of biomarker testing between black and white lung and colorectal cancer patients, which can lead to disparities in clinical trial participation and hinder access to the most effective treatments. A key way to address these barriers is to broaden insurance coverage of biomarker testing, as recommended by medical experts.