OTD Capstone Projects

Abstract

Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt in partnership with Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center offers REACH for Cancer Survivorship, a pediatric cancer survivorship clinic. REACH provides a full range of follow-up care designed to meet the physical, emotional, and practical needs of survivors and continuous surveillance of deleterious effects of cancer and its treatments. The purpose of this project was to meet population and agency needs through research of long- and late-term sequela while advocating for occupational therapy’s role in the oncology population through the proactive therapy and prospective surveillance models. The process of creating this project included synthesizing the literature, communication and collaboration with healthcare professionals, and patient interaction during observation of patient visits in both the acute hematology-oncology and survivorship clinics. This project resulted in a resource guide to provide the survivor and family with insight, education, health promotional information and activities, local and national supports, and more. The guide will be handed out at new patient visits in booklet format. The goal of this resource is to encourage survivors to make healthy, proactive decisions in hopes to potentially avoid or decrease severity of possible late term effects, while also fostering the feeling that they are not alone when navigating this “new normal.”

Publication Date

Spring 4-12-2024

Faculty Mentor

Meegan Lambert, OTD, OTR/L, LMT

Department

Occupational Therapy, School of

College

Health Sciences & Nursing, Gordon E. Inman College of

Document Type

Scholarly Project

Degree

Doctorate of Occupational Therapy (OTD)

Degree Level

Doctoral

Degree Grantor

Belmont University

Keywords

Cancer survivorship; pediatric cancer; oncology; resource guide; children’s health; long term follow up; developmental; mental health; advocacy; research

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