The improvement in continuity and integrity of survivorship care for breast cancer survivors in Chinese healthcare system

Abstract

Breast cancer is a major threat to human health. For a long term, breast cancer and the side effects of cancer treatments affect health and life quality of cancer survivors. With the development of medical technology for breast cancer in recent decades, the long‐term survival rate of breast cancer patients has been dramatically improved. There is an urgent need to identify and establish a health care model that could provide more customized, long‐term, and comprehensive medical services for breast cancer patients, especially for those in China. Multiple cancer survivorship care plans that have been widely used in Western countries, such as chronic care, shared care, and disease‐specific model, were summarized from original researches, systemic reviews, and health guidelines published by national and international health organizations. In currently available cancer survivorship care plans, oncology nurses played an indispensable significant role. But current existing cancer survivorship care plans could not be directly implemented in China due to different cultural backgrounds between Eastern and Western countries. Some adjustments and modifications need to be done on the basis of existing survivorship care plan to make it more suitable to Chinese patients' needs and with Chinese characteristics. For providing continuous and integrated high‐quality cancer survivorship care suitable for Chinese health care system, innovative technologies (telehealth, internet‐based symptom monitoring, mobile applications, etc.) could be rationally used as supplementary tools for current cancer survivorship care plans.