Survivorship Care and Advanced Practice Providers

Survivorship Care and Advanced Practice Providers

Heather Marie Hylton, PA-C

@hmhyltonpac
Jun 04, 2012
At this year’s Annual Meeting, one of the many tracks available is the robust "Patient and Survivor Care" track, which covers a variety of topics.

Among the different sessions associated with this track was one held on Sunday called Addressing the Imbalance of Supply and Demand: Integrating Advanced Practice Providers into Survivorship Care. This kind of an education session highlights ASCO’s commitment both to identifying workforce strategies that help close the anticipated supply and demand gap for oncology services and ensuring appropriate longitudinal care for survivors of cancer.

In this session, chaired by Dr. Goldstein of ASCO’s Workforce Advisory Group, Mr. Pickard and Dr. Oeffinger discussed survivorship care models at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, respectively, while Ms. O’Brien discussed the successful implementation of a survivorship program in the community oncology setting. In all of the survivorship care models discussed, physician assistants and advanced practice nurses are successfully integrated into survivorship practice and provide much-needed services for this special patient population.

As interest grows in having physician assistants and advanced practice nurses provide care to survivors, there are a number of factors to consider, both from the standpoint of surveillance for survivors and from the perspective of integrating and educating advanced practice providers for survivorship care roles. Dr. Oeffinger indicated in his presentation that the ASCO Survivorship Committee is working to develop guidance for surveillance of cancer survivors. Mr. Pickard emphasized in his presentation that advanced practice providers have the knowledge and skills to provide survivorship care and, accordingly, have educational needs and preferences in ways they address these education needs. There are numerous resources available for providing education on survivorship care, including courses offered through ASCO University.

I look forward to seeing continued progress in the areas of survivorship care and integration of physician assistants and nurse practitioners into survivorship and oncology practices and appreciate ASCO’s attention to these issues.

Your thoughts and comments are welcome!

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