Photo Credit: iStock.com/Fly View Productions
In part 1, Dr. Shelly Johns, clinical health psychologist and cancer researcher, emphasized the importance of physicians routinely addressing fear of cancer recurrence (FCR) in patient conversations. Now, Dr. Johns explains how supportive interventions can improve the quality of life for adults with breast cancer. She emphasizes the importance of acknowledging all concerns of cancer survivors, educating them about their actual risk of recurrence, and offering various coping skills to manage their fears effectively.
Transcript:
I’m Shelly Johns. I’m a board certified clinical health psychologist and an associate professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine. And I’m also a research scientist at the Regenstrief Institute in the Center for Health Services Research. I have worked in cancer care since 1996, and I have been both a clinician working directly with individuals with cancer. And then I’m also a cancer researcher testing supportive interventions to improve quality of life for cancer adults with cancer.
First of all, we really don’t differentiate between rational concerns and excessive worry because on our team, we consider that all concerns are legitimate and we don’t really get caught up in the validity or the truth or the excess of those types of concerns. But within that, we do invite survivors to notice and just be aware of the concerns that they have, the thoughts, the feelings that are coming up for them, and then making decisions about the action steps that they want to take so that they’re not just worrying, they’re worrying, but then taking some action. And so we really try to educate survivors, first of all with our oncology colleagues about their actual risk of recurrence. Many people overestimate their risk and then that increases their fear. And so sometimes just having an open conversation with one’s oncologist can really help support getting more in touch with what the actual risk is. And then from there, we just invite survivors to consider a variety of different coping skills. We might present a menu of different options to see what is most appealing to a survivor who is really struggling with fear of recurrence.
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