Telling a person they have cancer is like throwing a bomb at their feet, so nurses will be sharing best practices with fellow healthcare professionals on how to help patients through the ordeal.
“We would like to show healthcare professionals across the board that patients are not just numbers. The input of every person who comes in contact with patients could make a difference to their treatment,” Bernice Scicluna told Times of Malta.
“Making patients’ lives a little bit easier is our ultimate satisfaction. We get nothing in return but their smile and ‘thank you’ and that means the world to us,” she said.
Ms Scicluna is one of the nurses at Sir Anthony Mamo Oncology Centre behind a conference, themed ‘The cancer journey – embracing the care’, aimed at healthcare professionals.
Making patients’ lives a little bit easier is our ultimate satisfaction
Read: Six cycles of chemotherapy, 15 courses of radiotherapy and two bags of blood
At the conference, to be held on Friday, various professionals will discuss the stages patients go through, from diagnosis to survivorship or death, with a special mention of lung, lymphoma and pediatric cancers.
One of the speakers, chemotherapy practice nurse Abigail Camenzuli told Times of Malta the biggest fear patients had was death.
“Their main concern remains the unknown. Even this very morning, a patient’s major concern was how many days he had left. Unfortunately, depending on the stage, survival rate for lung cancer is usually low,” she said.
However, new treatment is lengthening the prognosis and for some people one day is a lot.
“While we cannot tell them how long they have got left, we can empower them with information on how to take care of themselves throughout treatment,” Ms Camenzuli said.
Simple things, such as how to take care of their skin and hair to reduce the side effects of chemotherapy, breaking down technical terminology and ensuring they have the right paperwork all improve the patients’ well-being throughout the treatment.
Ms Camenzuli will be speaking on how and what information is provided to patients at different stages.
“When we tell them of their diagnosis, it is like we are throwing a bomb at their feet. Naturally, patients want to know everything as soon as they have been diagnosed, however, we re-commend they go home, sleep over it and come back so we can better explain their upcoming journey,” she said.
She noted that, most of the time, ‘chemotherapy’ is the only word patients absorb when told they had cancer.
It is recommended that information is provided gradually and slowly because retention of information by anxious patients or those under shock is close to 35%.
After the news sinks in, Aurora Support Service holds meetings with patients about chemotherapy and its side effects.
A local study has shown that such meetings help reduce anxiety and increase the patients’ knowledge on what they are going to go through, reflecting positively on their treatment.