Number of cancer cases (estimated at 385,000 in 2015) continues to increase and once out of the hospital, patients find themselves in the office of the generalist, who must ensure their follow-up.
“Current public health policies, in Europe as in the United States, encourage an increasingly early transfer of the care of these patients from the hospital to medicine of town, the general practitioner becoming the pivot of the coordination of care “ highlights the Dress in a new report on the follow-up of cancer patients.
However, a third of generalists have not received any additional training related to oncology. And only 16% are members of a cancer or palliative care network.
General practitioners with little training in oncology
At the time of the announcement diagnosis, only 31% of doctors have complete information on the pathology of their patients, as recommended by the Cancer plan.
“While physicians consider their role in end-of-life support and psychological follow-up for these patients to be particularly important, two-thirds experience difficulties in managing the undesirable effects of treatments, to take charge of the consequences of cancer or to support the end of life “ we read in this report.
An exchange with the hospital to improve
If the general practitioners consider in the majority of cases that the instructions received for the follow-up of the patients after cancer are clear, they do not always correspond to their needs. “Less than one in five doctors systematically receives information on the expected side effects of treatments and more than a third has not been consulted on the feasibility of returning home “.
This lack of transmission of information from hospitals or specialist physicians in a timely manner is often cited as a source of difficulties. Thus, more than 20% of general practitioners, unable to easily contact the referenced oncologist, choose to refer to the emergency room an immunocompromised patient declaring a high fever. e during the weekend, when he should be protected as much as possible from contact with other patients carrying infectious agents.
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