In recent years there has been a push to move away from traditional clinician led on treatment review of radiotherapy patients. Despite this impetus there has been little published work relating to how the new system can be implemented. This article describes how one department implemented a change in direction from the conventional and moved forward with radiographer-led review clinics. The Plan–Do–Check–Act cycle is used as a basis for evaluation with results of a small-scale patient audit and a comparison with other departments in the UK being presented. This method of implementation and evaluation proved successful and may serve as an early model for radiotherapy departments elsewhere.
Background and Aims Investment in innovative health technologies has been a focus of increasing critical interest in the social sciences. With proponents of such systems expounding new techniques, a strong normative context emerges for their adoption. Informed by the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), this study focuses on the discourse used by charitable organizations involved in such investments and how their involvement contributes to the enrolment of vulnerable groups, such as cancer sufferers. A central concern of STS is the strategies scientists use when talking about their work. Methods of communication may often suggest there is only one possible solution to a perceived problem. Such determinism may be reflected in material used by fundraisers where technologies are discussed in a normative, deterministic and definitely desirable way. Charitable organizations in charge of fundraising may thus become deeply enrolled within programmes of development in which the legitimacy of knowledge claims and evidence production are difficult to examine.
This paper explores post-treatment experiences of women who have had radiotherapy for gynaecological cancer. Drawing on data from a project which explored post-treatment wellbeing, conceptual metaphors of ghosts/haunting are used to engage with enduring legacies of cancer and ‘neglected matters’ in post-treatment trajectories. Current arrangements of care contribute to the idea that participants are ‘out of the other side of cancer’ once active treatment completes. Despite broader ambitions for holistic cancer rehabilitation, fragilities of body and mind persist, even when the outward representation is one of health, of looking well, of moving on. We show how neglected matters of cancer (visceral late effects, psychological suffering and lives not lived) are part of living with and beyond cancer. These ‘ghosts’ manifest in chronic states of unsettledness that are temporarily relieved by individualised ‘fixes’, such as mobilisation of ‘mind over matter’ discourse and mindfulness. This discourse and its associated tools are a powerful yet impoverished framing of approaches to living with and beyond cancer. We argue for the need to attend to ‘neglected matters’ of post-treatment trajectories differently.
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