Background
In 2012 a government funded endeavor to create and integrate a strategy for addressing survivorship issues will be finalized and evaluated. The process consists of assessment, consultation, treatment, support for hospital staff, and survivorship care plans for cancer patients. This will be the first hospital all-embracing survivorship strategy in Sweden.
Development through collaboration
Working together with patients, significant others and staff, using focus groups and social media, the project has developed:
• Network of psychosocial contact nurses.
• Multidisciplinary support team.
• Basic education for hospital staff (500 individuals).
• Support system for hospital staff and for patients.
• Individual survivorship plans.
Implications
The strategy shall be fully integrated within all cancer care processes. All cancer patients receiving care at Halmstad Hospital shall have a personal survivorship plan including physical, psychological, social and existential needs.
Within Sweden adequate resources for addressing survivorship are fragmented and unequally distributed. The result of this pilot project is of national interest as a step towards creating a model for an integrated and all-embracing survivorship plan. The inclusion of primary care, municipality-level care and the social welfare system into the strategy will be the natural next step of development. While there´s a growing body of research on basic and advanced needs of cancer survivors globally and in Sweden, there´s a gap concerning knowledge on how to acknowledge and meet these needs within the Swedish healthcare system.
There’s a need for research from the multi-scientific approach of innovational sciences to draw forth organizational, social and technical innovations concerning cancer survivorship. Region Halland and Halmstad University has started this research program in collaboration.
This presentation will inspire on how to develop and integrate services. It will also suggest how to include patients, their significant others and healthcare professionals into the developmental process through the approach of open innovation.