Building and Developing a Psychosocial Oncology Service

Sunday, 21 June 2009 - 9:00 am - 12:30 pm (half-day)

Barry D. Bultz PhD and Matthew Loscalzo MSW

Only in English / Ausschließlich auf Englisch


Target Audience:

Psychologists, Social Workers, Psychiatrists, Nurses, Administrators, Program Leaders


Workshop Objectives:

The attendees will be able to:

  • Identify challenges to creating a program of excellence in your setting
  • Explore and identify solutions to challenges
  • Examine success strategies for developing psychosocial programs of excellence


Workshop Description:

Despite high prevalence rates of emotional distress in cancer patients, funding for psychosocial programs is limited. One of the greatest barriers to growth and creation of programs is the lack of a cohesive roadmap to program development. The typical business plan model (demonstrating cost-benefit) does not work in a cancer center or medical system.

The focus of this workshop is to learn how to align and organize the best arguments, tailored to particular settings.  The patient experience, research, and clinical imperative, all need to be used to drive for a change of practice.  In this highly interactive workshop, specific strategies will be discussed and evaluated with participants to help develop service models that may be applicable in the participants' programs.

Participants will be expected to complete a very brief profile of their facility and to identify barriers and opportunities to building model programs. The group will then work together through a series of exercises to develop specifically tailored strategies to transcend these challenges and to promote the growth of robust psychosocial services.