Cancer Survivorship—A Framework for Quality Cancer Care

Abstract

When diagnosed with cancer or any other life-threatening condition, people must negotiate two once-separate but now integrated realms—a medical care industrial complex and an everyday life now lived in conscious awareness of mortality—a state of being subject to death. Life becomes a series of challenges and disruptions to relationships, body image and integrity, autonomy and independence, life goals, hopes, and dreams for the future. Whether one physically, emotionally, or spiritually survives, thrives, or succumbs to cancer is dependent upon a treatment plan that accounts for the multiple and varied ways in which people experience dual citizenship in the realms of the well and the sick. A theory of cancer survivorship that integrates both medical and patient perspectives into a cogent and coherent framework has the potential to enhance the quality of cancer care and the patient experience.