The Role of the Advanced Practice Nurse in Survivorship Care Planning

Authors' disclosures of potential conflicts of interest are found at the end of this article. C omprehensive survivor-ship care planning (SCP) is an essential component of quality cancer care. Since the 2006 seminal publication of the Institute of Medicine's report on cancer survivorship, it has been unclear which models of cancer sur-vivorship care translate to improved patient and system outcomes. An emerging model of survivorship care that has great potential for improving outcomes involves advanced practitioners , including advanced practice nurses (APNs) and physician assistants (PAs), as key providers of care for cancer survivors following completion of primary treatment. The purpose of this article is to describe the role of the APN in SCP through a brief review of the literature and two case studies focused on survivors with colorectal and non– small cell lung cancer. More than 40% of people born in the United States today will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives An estimated 14.5 million Ameri-cans with a history of cancer were alive in 2014; this number is expect-the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a seminal report, " From Cancer Patient to Cancer Survivor: Lost in Transition, " that identified cancer survivorship as a distinct phase of cancer care that has been neglected in important areas such as clinical guidelines, research, and advocacy (Hewitt, Greenfield, & Stovall, 2006). There is considerable debate among stakeholders as to who should be responsible for developing and providing a personalized plan for posttreatment care and what should be considered when developing that plan. It has become clear that the model used to care for a cancer survivor population is dependent upon the setting in which the care is provided , the cancer diagnosis and/or treatment, and the resources available to the practice or institution, as well as a host of other factors (McCabe & Jacobs, 2012). A widely utilized model is the APN-driven survivorship care program The holis-tic nursing focus in conjunction with clinical knowledge and skills makes the APN well suited to coordinate