Providing Leadership Through Patients as Partners: Improving Australian Colorectal Survivorship Care Through Perspectives from a Nurse Who Became a Cancer Patient

Objective: To provide contemporary real-world, real-life insights into gaps in supportive care experiences for people affected by colorectal cancer. For the first time, this article includes a patient as a coauthor, with the aim to identify future priorities to improve care and recovery in colorectal cancer survivorship. 

Data Sources: Electronic databases, peer-reviewed literature, and real-life professional and personal experiences were used. 

Conclusion: There are several problematic areas in providing supportive care for people affected by colorectal cancer that could be improved by wider access to colorectal specialist nurses, coordinated multidisciplinary teams, patient collaboration, linking survivorship care outcomes to national standards, and developing supported self-management care plans. 

Implications for Nursing Practice: A patient-led insight has underscored some fundamental failings in current service delivery among people affected by colorectal cancer. Partnering with consumers in research and service redesign is essential to stratify future priorities to optimize care and person-centered recovery.