Call for Abstracts

Navigators must have core knowledge of early signs of cancer, screening guidelines, and community and state resources available to support the patient’s population.

Potential topics include:

• Cancer screening
• Cancer screening follow-up to diagnostic workup
• Completion of diagnostic workup
• Disparate populations at screening events
• Community needs assessment
• Genetics
• Risk assessment
• Population health

The role of the navigator along the continuum of care is bidimensional in nature, with a patient-centered (empowerment of education and knowledge) and health system (multidisciplinary) orientation to deliver timely, seamless care.

Potential topics include:

• Barriers to care
• Interventions
• Clinical trial education and referrals
• Patient education
• Diagnosis to initial treatment and diagnosis to first oncology consult
• Tumor boards
• Multidisciplinary approach to care
• Models of navigation

Patient advocacy is protecting the individual’s rights and autonomy, speaking up for the individual and community needs, educating providers in the healthcare system on an individual's preference of care and needs, and ensuring the individual’s needs and preferences are integrated into the care delivery.

Potential topics include:

• Patient problem-solving and patient goals
• Caregiver support
• Identifying learning styles
• Engagement in decision-making tools
• Patient support groups

Distress extends along a continuum, ranging from common normal feelings of vulnerability, sadness, and fear to problems that can be disabling, such as depression, anxiety, panic, social isolation, and existential and spiritual crisis.

Potential topics include:

• Psychosocial distress screening
• Social support referrals
• Strategies for coping, disease, treatment, stress/anxiety

Navigation is integral to facilitating effective interprofessional collaboration and promoting patient satisfaction and care quality, as well as efficiently using healthcare resources to decrease cost across oncology patient populations.

Potential topics include:

• Navigation knowledge at time of orientation
• Oncology navigator core competencies review
• Tracking workloads

Navigators can use research and outcomes to develop and validate the programs and services provided.

Potential topics include:

• Patient experience and satisfaction with care
• Navigation program validation based on community assessment needs
• Original research on navigation programs
• How data are used for continuous improvement
• Patient transitions from point of entry
• Diagnostic workup to diagnosis

The identification of barriers, recognizing how barriers affect patient care, and providing interventions/resources to address barriers related to flow and processes of care are at the heart of operations management.

Potential topics include:

• Healthcare economics
• Organizational development
• Utilization resources
• Metrics:
  • 30-, 60-, 90-day readmission rate
  • Navigation operational budget
  • Navigation caseload, referrals to revenue-generating services
  • No-show rate
  • Patient retention through navigation
  • Emergency department utilization
  • Emergency admissions per number of chemotherapy patients

Throughout the seasons of survival, it is imperative for healthcare providers to continually offer the components of survivorship care in the forms of prevention through health and wellness promotion, surveillance for recurrence and screening for new cancers, intervention for management of lasting physical and psychosocial effects, and coordination of care for the cancer survivor.

Potential topics include:

• Survivorship care plans
• Transition from treatment to survivorship
• Referrals to support services at the survivorship visit
• Palliative care referrals
• Hospice referrals
• Bereavement programs