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Breast Cancer Survivorship Program at Princess Margaret Hospital
The Breast Cancer Survivorship Program at Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH) is committed to providing excellent patient-centred care for patients and their families. The Survivorship Transition to Employment Project (STEP) will offer educational programs for cancer survivors, and assist them in returning to work through a blended learning strategy (online and face to face) as part of the Survivorship education program.
STEP is designed to help transition survivors to better manage employment while living with cancer and to scaffold survivors back into the workforce by helping to build new skill sets. STEP can be an ideal way of retraining survivors and equipping them with the necessary skills, confidence and experience to seek out new employment that will be compatible with their disease. A key facet of STEP is the provision of assistance for those who are not empowered, and who are overwhelmed, by disease and the struggles faced in interactions with the healthcare system.
The objective of STEP is an extension of PMH Survivorship program’s educational offerings to include a focus on making the transition back to work. This is highly innovative and there is almost no research that directly bears on the question of the nature of the skills that will be most effective for cancer survivors, or the nature of employer support that would be most important.
Preliminary recommendations are presented based on feedback obtained from study participants.
Recommendation One: Increase the length of the class.
Recommendation Two: Provide patients with the option of participating in either the in-class or online STEP course.
Recommendation Three: Tailor the workbook and the online course to reflect the various streams patients are interested in exploring: returning to the same job, changing careers, early retirement and volunteering.
Information gathered from this study has increased our knowledge and capacity to begin identifying and managing return-to-work issues for women with breast cancer. We are investigating optimal methods for delivering support services and information, including face-to-face sessions and online learning channels. Offering patients the option to access information and to share experiences in an e-learning format will assist clinicians in providing patients with optimal information and learning for managing aspects of disease and return to work post-treatment.
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