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Primary care-led survivorship care for patients with colon cancer and the use of eHealth: a qualitative study on perspectives of general practitioners
  1. Laura A M Duineveld,
  2. Thijs Wieldraaijer1,
  3. Jan Wind1,
  4. Irma M Verdonck-de Leeuw2,
  5. Henk C P M van Weert1,
  6. Cornelia F van Uden-Kraan2
  1. 1Department of General Practice, Academic Medical Centre Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  2. 2Department of Clinical Psychology, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  1. Correspondence to Laura A M Duineveld; E l.a.duineveld@amc.uva.nl

Abstract

Objectives The aim of this study was to explore the perspectives of general practitioners (GPs) regarding their current and future role in survivorship care of patients with colon cancer, and to assess their perspectives on patients’ self-management capacities and the value of the eHealth application Oncokompas2.0 used by patients.

Setting GPs from the central part of the Netherlands were interviewed at their location of preference.

Participants 20 GPs participated (10 men, 10 women, age range 34–65 years, median age 49.5 years). The median years of experience as a GP was 14.5 years (range 3–34 years).

Results GPs indicated attempting to keep in contact with patients after colon cancer treatment and mentioned being aware of symptoms of recurrent disease. Most participants would have liked to be more involved and expected to be able to provide survivorship care of colon cancer. Requirements mentioned were agreements with secondary care and a protocol. GPs considered Oncokompas2.0, which stimulates patients to structure their own survivorship care, as a useful additional tool for a specific group of patients (ie, young and highly-educated patients).

Conclusions Based on the perspectives of the GPs, survivorship care of colon cancer in primary care is deemed feasible and the use of an eHealth application such as Oncokompas2.0 is expected to benefit specific groups of patients after colon cancer treatment.

  • Colon cancer
  • Survivorship care
  • PRIMARY CARE
  • eHealth

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

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