Self-management programme for cancer patients: a literature review

With increased cancer survivorship, cancer, in its chronic form, self-management among cancer patients has become an international research focus. Self-management programmes are used to guide the self-care process. Over the past 10 years, six self-management programmes for cancer patients (Taking CHARGE, Expert Patients Programme, Living with Cancer Education Program, Focus Program, PRO-SELF Program and Oncologist-referred exercise self-management programme) were used in a variety of self-management studies for cancer patients.

The aims of this paper are to describe, compare and critique these six self-management programmes that are commonly used to guide self-management for cancer patients, and propose directions for new self-management programme development among cancer patients.

Medline, Pubmed and Embase, Springer, Elsevier, EBSCO and ProQuest were searched for literatures on self-management programmes for cancer patients from 2000 to November 2010. Search terms such as 'self-management' or 'self-care' or 'patient education' or 'self-management' or 'self-care' or 'self-efficacy', 'intervention' or 'program*' 'cancer' or 'carcinoma' or 'neoplasms' were used.

Comparison and critique of these programmes revealed important limitations of cancer self-management programmes including lack of the facilitators' training process, failure to assess the cultural differences and failure to cover all of the outcome measures.

Researchers and clinicians need to build more individualized and dynamic self-management programmes that parallel advances in clinical research and practice for cancer patients.