April 2021 - Prof Marjan van den Akker and Dr Laura Deckx

Dr Kristi Milley spoke to Prof Marjan van den Akker from Goethe University in Germany and Dr Laura Deckx from The University of Queensland. Together Marjan and Laura have recently published ‘Psychosocial care for cancer survivors: A systematic literature review on the role of general practitioners.’ in the journal Psycho-Oncology. They highlight that with the exception of survivor's with a fear of recurrence, the GP is well placed to provide psychological care for cancer survivors.  However they also found there is sometimes a mismatch with the care that the patient is after and the care the GP thinks the patient seeks.  They point out that the most important common dominator was that care was multi-disciplinary – with the GP being part of a bigger team.  Prof van den Akker made the important statement that their study “illustrates the importance of the transition between secondary and primary care – which does not always happen smoothy.”