Background: There is not much research that explorers’ healthcare professionals experience and providing inpatient cancer rehab services. Thus, this article was done in Sydney Australia in an inpatient unit. This article looks at the experiences of 14 different multidisciplinary health professionals that provided cancer rehabilitation services in an inpatient setting. Data from focus groups were analyzed, as well as the impacts of the experiences from the healthcare providers to their patients.

Design and Participants: The population that was studied were 14 healthcare professionals working in therapy, and an inpatient unit in Australia. Interviews were conducted to this group. Different themes that were asked during these focus group interviews were about the therapeutic community, healing and hope, what is limited by the system, moral integrity and growth, as well as moral dilemmas, gratitude and humility. Qualitative results were studied.

 Results: Health professionals' focus groups and interviews produced one superordinate theme: Therapeutic community. Subordinate themes were Healing and Hope, Limited by the System, Moral Integrity and Growth, with further subthemes, Invalidation, Moral dilemmas, Gratitude and Humility. Positive views of the specialist service were tempered with issues associated with finite resources and staff feeling unsupported in their person-centered approach. Although rehabilitation was the primary focus of the unit, metastatic cancer may behave unpredictably; symptom recurrences meant that a dialogue of accepting palliative care and dying as a phase of life was also an important factor raised by some patients and families in our setting. Referral to palliative specialists for this dialogue was incorporated in the context of the rehabilitation care provided.

Commentary: There really has not been much work on this, and much more work will be needed going forward. As this was a qualitative study, and many of these things were based on focus groups as well as experience, some of the data may be skewed. A common theme was that participants felt that they needed more education with palliative care patients.

Bottom Line: In general, there are both negative and positive perspectives given by the professionals in this inpatient team. Referral to palliative care specialists is very important for these patients, and helping health professionals working in therapy understand the palliative care patient may be beneficial in the future.

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Source: Reynolds NL, Cole AM, Walmsley BD, Poulos CJ. Multidisciplinary healthcare providers' experience of working in an inpatient cancer rehabilitation unit in Sydney, Australia. Eur J Cancer Care (Engl). 2019 Nov;28(6):e13162. doi: 10.1111/ecc.13162. Epub 2019 Sep 30. PMID: 31571312.