Hi everyone,
Thanks for sharing the difficulties you have had with receiving the acknowledgement and support for your physical and emotional needs from first being diagnosed right through your whole experience including the ongoing sequelae of cancer treatment especially with AIs, the ongoing emotional impact, sleep disturbances etc . Our State of the Nation report that we published this year based on interviews/surveys with over 13,000 people around Australia raised very similar issues to what you have raised here including the need for communication training for healthcare professionals working with cancer patients.
Here's the link to it if you haven’t already read it.
https://www.bcna.org.au/media/6656/sotn-report-lowres.pdf
As a result of our findings there are a number of advocacy issues we are focusing on in 2019.
1. To increase the number of breast care nurses, particularly metastatic breast care nurses and especially in rural areas.
2. To increase the number of Medicare subsidised allied health appointments from 5 to 10 (so if you require counselling this would be in addition to the appointments you are entitled to through a mental health plan).
3. With funding from Cancer Australia we will continue to develop the My Journey online tool so that it will provide those who have completed hospital based treatment with a comprehensive range of tools and information to help manage your ongoing psychological and physical care needs according to your preferences and inform you about helpful programs and services.
We'll keep you posted on progress
in these areas and will probably ask for your assistance at some stage.
