What if? Cancer Survivor Perspectives on How Receiving a Survivorship Care Plan (SCP) Might Have Affected Their Cancer Experience

Authors:

Cynthia Soloe (Presenter)
RTI International

Katherine Treiman, RTI International
Linda Squiers, RTI International
Aditi Narayan, LIVESTRONG Foundation
Stephanie Nutt, University of Texas Austin
Ruth Rechis, MD Anderson
Carla Bann, RTI International

Public Health Statement: With over 15.5 million cancer survivors in the U.S. today, survivorship care is of increasing importance. Post-treatment cancer survivors face challenges including management of long-term effects and monitoring for recurrences or new cancers. As a result, there is a need to explore survivor perspectives on the utility of post-treatment care navigation tools.

Purpose: Survivorship care plans (SCP) provide survivors with guidelines for monitoring and maintaining their health. Despite recommendations from leading professional and scientific organizations (e.g. American Society of Clinical Oncology, Institute of Medicine), there is evidence that providers do not routinely provide SCPs for their patients. The purpose of this analysis is to describe survivors’ perspectives on how receipt of a SCP would have altered their post-treatment cancer experience.

Methods/Approach: As a part of LIVESTRONG‘s 2015 Surveys for Post-Treatment Cancer Survivors, we asked survivors who reported they had not received an SCP how they anticipate an SCP would have changed their experience. We used thematic analysis to identify patterns across survivor responses to this question.

Results: A total of 168 survivors responded to the question, ‘How do you think your cancer experience would have been different if you had received a survivorship care plan?’ Themes identified indicate that survivors believe receiving an SCP would have increased their knowledge, enhanced their emotional well-being, and generally improved their survivorship experience.

Conclusions/Implications: Survivors perceive that SCPs are important to their survivorship experience, including their emotional well-being and knowledge about follow-up care. Provider education and guidelines are needed to ensure SCPs are routinely shared with survivors.