About

Program Background

A cancer patient’s journey from consultation to treatment to follow up can be an overwhelming time.

Radiotherapy is a part of many cancer patient’s treatment plan. Radiation treatments may include radiotherapy to cure or control the disease or to relieve symptoms. Patients will experience care from a multidisciplinary team, including radiation oncologists, nurses as well as radiation therapists. 

Patient experience is an important part of quality of care, including the intense period of receiving active cancer treatment. During this time patients can experience varying degrees of emotional and physical symptoms. Improving patient experience and alleviating patients’ distress can help to tackle the potential care gaps in the multi-step and technology-driven process typical of cancer management and radiation therapy. 

Who We Are

Person-centered Radiation Oncology Service Enhancement (PROSE) is a programmatic initiative aimed to improve patient experience in the radiation department by supporting QI work as well as research projects to better understand how PROSE can improve patient experience.

Program Objectives

To promote learning through changes in clinical routines towards person-centered care.

To establish feasibility and evaluate efficacy of proposed enhancements using patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) and patient-reported experience measures (PREMs).

To design and support research projects aimed to explore, evaluate and enhance person-centered care in an outpatient oncology setting.

What We Do

PROSE encompasses clinical care provided through radiotherapy professionals including medical physics, radiation therapists, nurses, radiation oncologists and other clinicians. PROSE strives to engage all members of the clinical care team to ensure person-centered care is at the forefront of all clinical encounters and patient experience is seamless within and between appointments.

PROSE works to identify gaps in patient experience and service delivery by collecting data directly from patients regarding their experiences and perspectives of their care throughout the radiation department. This data then directly informs the direction of QI projects that PROSE will undertake as well as the success of projects.