Breast Cancer: Exploring the Facts and Holistic Needs during and beyond Treatment

Abstract

Breast cancer patients face challenges throughout the journey of diagnosis, treatment, post-treatment, and recovery. The breast cancer patient is exposed to a multidisciplinary team including doctors, nurses, therapists, counselors, and psychologists. While the team assembled together aims to address multiple facets in breast cancer care, the sub-specialized nature of individual professional practices may constrain the overview of patients’ holistic needs and a comprehensive approach to cancer management. This paper aims to provide an overview of the holistic needs of breast cancer patients at each stage of their cancer journey, addressing their complex physical, psychological, and social needs. As every patient is different, cancer care has to be tailored to each patient based on a holistic needs assessment. This paper also explores how support can be provided from the perspectives of the healthcare providers, family members and caretakers. Examples of general practices at healthcare institutions worldwide as well as supportive care provided by support groups are discussed. The needs of breast cancer patients extend beyond the resolution of cancer as a disease, and the restoration of health as far as possible is a critical component of healing. Understanding the complex issues involved in the journey of breast cancer will aid healthcare providers to be better equipped to sensitively address their concerns and focus on healing the patient holistically. Methodology: This paper provides a literature review of validated practices in different countries and elaborates on the holistic needs of patients at various stages of recovery. This review is based on more than a decade of publications sourced from multiple resources including PubMed journal articles; books and official websites of breast cancer organizations.

Challenges, Coping Strategies, and Social Support among Breast Cancer Patients in Ghana

“…e social networks include friends, family members, healthcare professionals, and neighbors, and forms of support are mainly instrumental, structural and functional, emotional, and informational [11]. Health workers play an important role in orienting patients prior to treatment to help them choose the most suitable methods, thereby minimizing the level of stress and uncertainty [25]. In a study among young women diagnosed with BC, an increase in social support (measured by amount of social contacts) was associated with increased likelihood of survival [22].…”

Pre-screening Textual Based Evaluation for the Diagnosed Female Breast Cancer (WBC)

“…According to Taiwanese Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) report in 2014, the BC is most common disease among woman, more than 11,700 Taiwanese woman suffered with total death of 2,071 from BC diagnosis and globally around1.7 million new cases every year and 522,000 deaths, within 14% deaths increased between 2008 to 2012, making it the most frequently diagnosed disease among women worldwide [1,2]. The major concerns of the BC including doctors, accessing therapist's resources, psychologists, confidentiality and financially, etc., [3,4]. With expanding benefits of AI tools in health-care, for the last decade, these tools has been shown the effectiveness in detecting human diagnosis and medical conditions as compare to human's professional [5], the Virtual Assistant (VA) system is the most promising tool that gaining high visibility to resolve these major concern among many possible solutions [6,7].…”

Proactive community support tailored to holistic needs: A cohort study

“…Cancer care has traditionally been carried out in an outpatient setting. Patients are known to be generally satisfied with clinical aspects of their care, but less pleased with the nonclinical elements . They report poor communication in relation to their practical and emotional concerns and have been dissatisfied with the lack of financial advice and support available .…”

“…Patients are known to be generally satisfied with clinical aspects of their care, 6,7 but less pleased with the nonclinical elements. 8 They report poor communication in relation to their practical and emotional concerns and have been dissatisfied with the lack of financial advice and support available. 9,10 They recognize that the clinical setting may not be the best place to receive such support, so they can be reluctant to disclose psychosocial concerns there, perceiving the staff to be too busy.…”