Proposed Topic (Most preferred): :
Enhancing Partnership with Patients and Community (Projects initiated to engage patients / carers / community to improve efficiency / quality of care)
Authors (including presenting author) :
Choy YP (1), Lai WYJ (1) Tsang SC (2), Leung KYC (2), Chan WMM (2)
Affiliation :
(1) Department of Oncology, Princess Margaret Hospital (2) Cancer Patient Resource Centre, Princess Margaret Hospital
Introduction :
According to the Hong Kong Cancer Registry, the number of newly diagnosed breast cancer cases in women increased by 12.3% to 5,565 in 2021. The overall five-year relative survival rate was 84.2%. Hence it is important that sufficient and appropriate medical and social support should be in place for those cancer survivors. By corporate direction, strengthening medical-social collaboration (MSC) with community partners is one of the Hospital Authority’s (HA) strategic foci to enhance patient support
Objectives :
1. To building a structured MSC model in KWC. 2. To attain better leverage on community resources and to foster capacity building for patient support via cross-specialty and cross-sectoral coordination for MSC development in KWC. 3. To support breast cancer survivors to stay healthy in the community. 4. To help promote District Health Centre (DHC) as a hub for meeting individual’s health and psychosocial needs.
Methodology :
With limited corporate experience in MSC-based cancer survivorship programs, thoughtful planning was required before the commencement of the project. The Department of Oncology, Cancer Patient Resource Centre (CPRC) of Community Heath Care (CHC) in KWC and Sham Shui Po District Health Centre (SSPDHC) held meetings to formulate a structured MSC framework and to develop the service model in terms of role delineation of the involved patient-care units, program objective and content, patient selection criteria, coordination pathways, and monitoring and evaluation methods. Fast-track back-referral pathway was set up.
Result & Outcome :
The recruitment started from October 2021, fifty-seven clients in total were successfully referred to SSPDHC participated in the 6-session [你乳健康] MSC breast cancer survivorship programme. Interim evaluation was made in March 2022. The outcomes of the program were as follows:
1. Successful demonstration of a new medical social collaboration services model on breast cancer survivorship in KWC.
2. Encouraging feedback from clients, and an overall reduction of their distress level from the pre & post distress thermometer assessment.
3. Provision of psychosocial support, promotion of health and wellbeing, and improvement in adaptation and adjustment to community amongst breast cancer survivors.
4. Positive feedback and support by various stakeholders.
5. Based on the experience of the initial pilot program, the programme expanded its recruitment criteria in September 2022 and is now adopted as a regular service by SSPDHC, and has been promoted to other DHC centers in KWC.
Way forward KWC CHC will continue to support the development of structured MSC service to cancer survivors. The valuable experience of building this service model can also apply to different cancer types, to other medical-social collaborative models and to other clusters.
