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Patient-centred cancer care requires careful attention to both quantity and quality of life. Assuring safety, comfort, and function for cancer patients requires the efforts of a multidisciplinary healthcare team.1,2,3 Rehabilitation services, including physiotherapy, have long been recognized as an integral component of comprehensive cancer care.2,3,4 Despite significant advances in cancer treatment and management, cancer survivors continue to experience multiple morbidities as a consequence of both the cancer itself and cancer treatment. Physical impairments in strength, range of motion, mobility, fatigue, pain, chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy and lymphedema can be significantly improved with physiotherapy interventions.4,5 In addition, such interventions have been shown to be cost-effective by reducing the need to access other more costly healthcare services, as well as reducing indirect costs of cancer survivorship, such as caregiver burden, transportation costs and equipment needs.5,6 While there are usually rehabilitation/physiotherapy programs present at Canadian tertiary cancer centres, such essential services may function and be structured quite differently in the community cancer care setting.7,8 This paper describes how a busy community cancer program located at the Jack Ady Cancer Centre (JACC) in Lethbridge, Alberta, introduced and then optimized an on-site physiotherapy program to meet its growing cancer patient care needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: People living with advanced cancer experience functional decline and increasing difficulty participating in activities of daily living over their final year of life, consequently reducing quality of life. Palliative rehabilitation may serve to mitigate some of these challenges by optimising function. However, limited research and theory explore the rehabilitative process of adaptation amid increasing dependency, often experienced by people living with advanced cancer. Aim: To explore the lived experience of everyday life for working-aged adults living with advanced cancer, and how this changes over time. Design: A longitudinal hermeneutic phenomenological approach was employed, using in-depth semi-structured interviews. Data was analysed using inductive thematic analysis, and findings mapped against the Model of Human Occupation and illness experience literature. Setting/participants: Purposively sampled working-aged adults (40–64 years) with advanced cancer were recruited by a rural home care team in Western Canada. Results: Thirty-three in-depth interviews were conducted over 19 months with eight adults living with advanced cancer. Advanced cancer and other losses have a disruptive impact on daily life. Despite experiencing progressive functional decline, these adults intentionally sought to participate in valued everyday activities. Adaptation to ongoing deterioration occurred through engagement in daily life. Conclusions: Despite experiencing disruption to routines and daily life, people living with advanced cancer seek to continue doing what is important to them, albeit in a modified form. Adaptation to functional decline is an active, ongoing process and occurs through continued engagement in activities. Palliative rehabilitation can facilitate participation in everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an overview of the Oncology Rehabilitation Program, offered by the Ottawa Regional Cancer Center in Ontario. Facilities available to participating patients; Results of the program; Assessment of the program.