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Background
Due to early detection and improving treatment, the number of breast cancer survivors is increasing. It is estimated that there are now over 113 000 women living in Australia who have had a diagnosis of breast cancer in the past 20 years. How to best care for these women in the long term is an issue currently facing oncologists. With workforce shortages affecting cancer professionals and the changing focus of care to a more holistic approach, it is likely that general practitioners will have opportunities to become increasingly involved in the care of breast cancer survivors.
Objective
This article outlines issues to consider when caring for women in the years following their breast cancer treatment, and discusses the role of the GP in current and future models of care.
Discussion
General practitioners are ideally placed and skilled to address the long term issues that affect women who have survived breast cancer.
'After my very last radiation treatment for breast cancer, I lay on a cold steel table, hairless, half dressed and astonished by the tears streaming down my face. I thought I would feel happy about finally reaching the end of treatment, but instead I was sobbing... I think I cried because this body had so bravely made it through 18 months of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. Ironically, I also cried because I would not be coming back to that familiar table where I had been comforted and encouraged. Instead of joyous, I felt lonely, abandoned, and terrified. This was the rocky beginning of cancer survivorship...'1
It is estimated that there are now over 113 000 breast cancer survivors in Australia.2 With current workforce shortages affecting cancer health professionals and the changing focus of care to a more holistic approach, it is likely that general practitioners will become increasingly involved in the care of breast cancer survivors.
Defining survivorship
Life after breast cancer involves adjusting to a 'new self', adapting to living with the long term effects of cancer and its treatment, as well as living with uncertainty. In the past, the term 'cancer survivor' was used to describe someone who is cured of their cancer. This usually meant someone who was free of disease 5-10 years following treatment. 'Survivorship' now refers to...