Cancer care is about to experience a silver tsunami.
"That means that we have a huge population who need the care. And we have a huge shortage in people who can provide the care, and the ever increasing cost of in-house care," said Lee Song, PhD, vice dean for research and scholarship at the UT Health San Antonio School of Nursing.
She studies cancer survivorship, family caregiving and technology-based interventions among aging patients with different types of cancer.
"People are going home sicker and sicker, and then caregivers are taking on so many nursing care tasks that have been provided by professionally trained (nurses) for many years," Song said. "Now they’re on the family’s shoulder and on the patient's shoulder."
To help ease this burden, she’s been studying an eHealth symptom and complication management program for cancer patients that attempts to recreate the clinical process at home.
"So that we can triage care, you know, in the hospital, if you're in critical condition you get a lot of attention from everyone," she said. "If you feel good, you are left alone to be discharged.
"And then by using, you know, websites, sensors, different things, we could extend that nurse helping hand into the community, in the home settings," she said.
Song hopes her research will improve these tools so patients AND caregivers will be better supported at home while also improving the quality of their patient’s care…and saving them potentially a lot of money.
Science & Medicine is a collaboration between TPR and The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, about how scientific discovery in San Antonio advances the way medicine is practiced everywhere.
