Cancer survivorship in Germany: Education of GPS—Why and how?

Abstract

97 Background: General Practitioners (GP) play a pivotal role in caring for patients with malignant diseases in screening and detection, additional supporting care whilst treatment, and (long-term) follow-up. They often do not feel to be qualified enough for this task, and as well claim to lack support by specialists. This is a well-known problem, already addressed by the Institute of Medicine a few years ago. As an increasing number of patients will be diagnosed with cancer – and will survive for many years, following curatively intended treatment or with a chronic cancer disease, Cancer Survivorship was identified as the area of utmost importance. The relevance of this field was underlined by the disappointing results of the simple question we asked GPs: “When and how often should the tumor markers CEA, CA 15.3, and PSA be assessed during standardized follow-up of patients with early breast cancer, colorectal cancer or prostate cancer?”. Only one out of 30 answered it correctly. Together with the State Chamber of Medicine of Südbaden, we started an education program for GPs to improve this critical interface. Methods: During a full day training, we provided an educational program covering the most relevant topics in Cancer Survivorship: physical long-term sequelae and late complications after multimodal therapy strategies, their prevention and treatment; fatigue and self management, reasonable complementary and alternative medicine; management of chronic pain syndromes, recommendations for tertiary prevention, physical activities, nutrition and a guideline conform follow-up. Training was completed by a knowledge test and an overall evaluation. Results: All participants welcomed this newly implemented training program and considered it as very useful for their daily practice. Further support was urgently requested by the GPs, preferably in the format of (defined) Survivorship Care plans and follow-up schedules. Conclusions: GPs need more support and information in Cancer Survivorship. Widespread trainings programs should be developed and offered, in close collaboration with the respective State Chambers of Medicine and cancer specialists, and GPs, and further improve the outpatient care of cancer survivors.