Developing a Cancer Survivorship Curriculum for Family Medicine Residents: A Needs Assessment

Abstract

With the increasing survival of cancer patients, primary care residents must be familiar with the late effects of cancer treatment and be able to offer appropriate survivorship care in partnership with cancer care specialists. To address these paired public health and educational needs, an interdisciplinary group at our institution is developing, implementing, and evaluating an online cancer survivorship curriculum for primary care residents. In the development phase of our survivorship curriculum we administered an online needs assessment survey questionnaire and conducted a focus group interview with the family medicine residents at our institution. Residents indicated that they rarely utilized survivorship care plans or explicitly negotiated a program of shared patient care with the patient’s cancer specialists. Less than satisfactory elements of cancer survivorship education were identified. Cancer survivorship care is common in family medicine residency care and opportunities exist to improve education, care, and collaboration.