AIMS
- To develop an understanding of the experience and needs of consumers (patients/carers) regarding nutrition care across the cancer care continuum through a cross-sectional survey and focus groups/individual semi-structured interviews
- Consumers (patients/carers) and multidisciplinary oncology health professionals co-designed a cancer nutrition care pathway to guide and improve the provision of nutritional care of patients throughout the cancer care continuum
- Pilot the feasibility of the cancer nutrition care pathway in clinical practice and make future recommendations for implementation.
SUMMARY
The project was completed over 5 stages to develop a cancer nutrition care pathway (known as the CanEAT pathway). This pathway provides an evidence-based framework to guide and improve the provision of nutritional care of people with cancer, throughout the care continuum, in particular the transition from acute treatment, into recovery and survivorship. This work utilised experience based co-design (EBCD) methodology and enabled a strong partnership to be developed between people with cancer, carers and health professionals. EBCD is an approach to service improvement where individual patients tell the story of their experience of care, then patients and health professionals work together in a collaborative change process (co-design) to identify areas for improvement and design changes to services. Collectively, people with cancer, carers and health professionals have designed The CanEAT pathway which aims to guide and inform effective nutrition care across the continuum of care based on identified critical components or touch-points.
See the The CanEAT pathway.
See the CanEAT pathway and MST infographic for people with cancer and their carers and the CanEAT pathway and MST infographic for health professionals.
See the publications from this work - patient and carer focus paper and co-design paper on the CanEAT pathway here.
Project completed: Sept 2018-Nov 2019
The next phase of the project was November 2020 - May 2022 (18 months). iCanEAT Project: Implementation of the CanEAT pathway for people with cancer, carers and health professionals and focused on the implementation of the CanEAT pathway for people with cancer, carers and health professionals. For more details please contact [email protected]
SPONSOR
Peter Mac
FUNDING
Cancer Strategy & Development, Department of Health Victoria
TEAM
Jenelle Loeliger, Project Manager
Sarah Dewar, Project Officer (2018-19 pathway project)
