Mastodon The role for palliative care in gynecologic cancer treatment ~ Pallimed

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

The role for palliative care in gynecologic cancer treatment

by Dee Sparacio and Christian Sinclair

This week's #hpm chat (June 10th 9-10p EST) we will be co-hosting with #gyncsm (Gynecologic Cancer Social Media) and discussing Palliative Care for women with gynecologic cancers.

We are so happy to be hosting a joint chat with the the #gyncsm community. Dee Sparacio (@womanofteal) and Chistina Lizaso (@btrfly12) are strong patient advocates. They have done a great job moderating this monthly chat since 2013 and have made #gyncsm into one of the leading cancer focused chats on Twitter. Read more about their past chats on the #gyncsm site.

One of the unique aspects of this chat will be the differences between the two communities. The #hpm chat tends to draw more clinicians as the core group, while #gyncsm has a much stronger patient driven community.

Our discussion will be guided by the following questions:

  • T1: What does the term "palliative care" mean to you? How do you think palliative care differs from hospice?
  • T2A: Have you discussed palliative care with your doctor? Who brought it up? How did it make you feel?
  • T2B: When in the patient's treatment do they tend to get referred to a palliative care specialist? When is ideal?
  • T3: Are there medical / insurance requirements to obtaining palliative care?
  • T4: What do you wish you would have known about palliative care? Doc's: What do you wish your patients knew?
  • T5: For those with experience with palliative care, what were the positives / negatives?

Palliative care clinicians will have a wide variety of experiences with patients who have gynecologic cancers, much of them largely dependent on the referral pattern of the doctors who primarily care for this group of patients.  Some places may encourage early access to help with symptoms and build relationships, while other centers may only see palliative care as helpful when goals are about to change (although hopefully this chat may help illuminate that narrow view.)  I was happy to find this open-access position statement from the Society of Gynecologic Oncology on palliative care and hope that any palliative care clinician reading this will click, save, read and then email to their GynOnc colleagues and invite them to tea so we can find common ground. Much like we will be doing in this chat this week!

For those not familiar with palliative care, you can read this fact sheet on palliative care from the NCI (@NCI) and this article from Cancer.Net (@cancerdotnet).

For this joint chat, include both #gyncsm and #hpm in your tweets.

We look forward to having you join our discussion or come and "lurk and learn".

Questions? Contact us at gyncsm@gmail.com or christian@pallimed.org

Dee
#gyncsm co-founder and co-moderator
Christian
#hpm co-founder and co-moderator

What: #hpm / #gyncsm chat on Twitter
When: Wed 6/10/2015 - 9p ET/ 6p PT
Host: @WomanofTeal and @ctsinclair
Facebook Event Listing: https://www.facebook.com/events/400591026795240/

If you are new to Tweetchats, you do not need a Twitter account to follow along. Try using the search function on Twitter. If you do have a Twitter account, we recommend using tchat.io, for ease of following and tweeting.

Chat Transcript and Chat Analytics can be found after that chat is over courtesy of @Symplur

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