In this interview, we meet Eline Bouwman from the clinical team at the Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands.
Please introduce yourself and share with us why you joined PanCareFollowUp.
My name is Eline Bouwman. I‘m a PhD-student at the Radboudumc Center of Expertise for Cancer Survivorship in Nijmegen (the Netherlands). I joined this project as it gives me the opportunity to expand my work on person-centered interventions for survivors to a broader audience in Europe. In addition, I would like to, together with all these wonderful partners of this project, make a real contribution in reaching the aim of this project: improving the quality of life for survivors of childhood and adolescent cancer survivors across Europe.
Introduce your clinic and how long-term follow-up is organised in your clinic/country.
At our center, but also in other centers in the Netherlands, survivorship care for childhood cancer survivors has been well established. Five years after diagnosis, survivors are invited for the first time to visit our outpatient clinic at the Radboudumc Center of Expertise for Cancer Survivorship in Nijmegen. After this visit, survivors are invited for follow-up consultations every 1, 2 or 5 years. Prior to, during and after the clinic visit, person-centered care principles, will be applied by our medical staff. Listing to the personal needs and preferences of the survivor is one of the most important features of this person-centered care. We believe this really helps to empower the survivor to be a part in his or her own care.
Why do you think PanCareFollowUp is an important project?
In the Netherlands, we are lucky that survivors have access to a high-quality survivorship care already. However, high quality survivorship care should be accessible to all survivors. PanCareFollowUp really contributes a lot in making that happen for survivors in Europe. In addition, PanCareFollowUp also focusses on lifestyle in survivors. Many people do not realize the importance of lifestyle in survivorship care. Being involved in this specific PanCareFollowUp task, I can only stress the importance of maintaining healthy lifestyle behaviors such as enough physical activity and a healthy diet. However, especially for survivors, adopting to a good lifestyle may not be as easy as it sounds. Therefore, personal coaching by lifestyle coaches who understand the survivor’s specific situation can be very useful for survivors. I am happy that the PanCareFollowUp enables us to develop a personalized eHealth lifestyle intervention.
What makes this project unique for you?
For me, the uniqueness of this project lies within the fact that there are so many European partners involved who bring so much expertise into the project. Not only late effect specialists and researchers are involved, but also survivors themselves! I think it’s is a very nice feature of the project to have survivors involved in this project as representatives for the survivor population. In the end, it’s all about the survivor!
What do you hope this project will achieve in general?
In general, I hope that this project will open the door for more centers in Europe to establish a high standard of survivorship care. And when looking at my own focus in this project, I hope the awareness of a healthy lifestyle for survivors will be increased, both in survivors as in healthcare professionals.
What will this project add to long-term follow-up care in your clinic/country?
The eHealth Lifestyle intervention, which will run at the Radboudumc and Princess Máxima Centre as a pilot, will give our center the opportunity to be able to provide survivors actual help in adopting to healthy lifestyle behaviors instead of only giving advice. Hopefully, this intervention will be successful and will be fully implemented at our center. Also, I believe our center will profit from the guideline development which other project partners are currently working on.
What will be the most important benefit for survivors in your clinic/ country?
The most important benefit for survivors of this project will be that the care they receive already at our clinic will be expanded with the opportunity to be part of the eHealth Lifestyle intervention.
What’s the biggest challenge for your clinic in PanCareFollowUp?
The biggest challenge for us in PanCareFollowUp is designing and setting up the eHealth Lifestyle intervention study at two centers in the Netherlands. This also requires a lot of close collaboration with our people, but also with people working at the PMC. However, I‘m proud that so far, the project is running quite smoothly!
What’s the most fun thing for you in PanCareFollowUp?
Getting to know other project members and collaborate with them!
What’s the most important benefit of your work within PanCareFollowUp for survivors?
As I said earlier, the survivors will benefit from our work within PanCareFollowUp as they are given the opportunity to receive personalized coaching to work on health behaviors if needed. And the best part is that they can receive this coaching from home via video conferencing software!
What else do we need to know about your clinic or is there anything else you want to share?
That I really hope that this project will be a big success and will improve quality of life of survivors across Europe!