Survivorship care plans (SCPs) were originally recommended in the Institute of Medicine's From Cancer Patient to Cancer Survivor: Lost in Transition (Hewitt, Greenfield, & Stovall, 2006). Much work has been done by many people since then, and SCPs have been integrated into the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer (CoC) standards. However, eight years later, research suggests that few cancer programs are ready to implement this recommendation. Many have expressed concerns about the CoC's January 2015 deadline requiring SCP implementation. In early 2014, the CoC surveyed members on their readiness to implement SCPs and found that only 21% already had a SCP process ready for implementation and another 37% of member programs were confident that they could. This mirrors other research that show low and inconsistent uptake, nationally, of the SCP standard. Much of this was discussed in a previous editorial (Mayer, 2014), so why bring it up again?
References
American Nurses Association. (2010). Nursing: Scope and standards of practice (2nd ed.). Silver Spring, MD: Author.
Commission on Cancer. (2014). Accreditation Committee clarifications for standard 3.3 survivorship care plan. Retrieved from
http://bit.ly/1tzyMieHewitt, M., Greenfield, S., & Stovall, E. (2006). From cancer patient to cancer survivor: Lost in transition. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Mayer, D. (2014). Survivorship care plans: Necessary but not sufficient? Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing, 18(Suppl. 1), 7-8. doi:10.1188/14.CJON.S1.7-8
Mayer, D. K., Nekhlyudov, L., Snyder, C. F., Merrill, J. K., Wollins, D. S., & Shulman, L. N. (2014). American Society of Clinical Oncology clinical expert statement on cancer survivorship care planning. Journal of Oncology Practice. Retrieved from
http://bit.ly/1x7BoGh http://bit.ly/1x7BoGhMayer, D. K., & Reiner, A. (2013). On leadership from the bedside to the boardroom. Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing, 17, 353-354. doi:10.1188/13.CJON.353-354
