Cancer prehabilitation for healthcare professionals
The Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) in collaboration with the national Cancer Prehabilitation Oversight Group (CPOG), Scottish Government and Macmillan Cancer Support have developed a Once for Scotland approach for delivery of prehabilitation. Focus is being placed on looking at opportunities to reduce unwarranted variation in delivery of quality care and to sustainably improve accessibility and equity of cancer prehabilitation.
Prehabilitation (or prehab) is the practice of enhancing a patient's functional capacity prior to treatment. Prehab is the crucial first step in both preparing a patient for treatment but also in ensuring they have the best chance of experiencing a smooth recovery and achieving a good long-term functional outcome. As clinicians and healthcare workers we are uniquely placed to educate our patients about prehab and provide assistance and resources to help them best prepare for treatment.
This toolkit aims to standardise and outline the essential components of the National Cancer Prehabilitation Pathway, providing a framework for the delivery of high-quality prehabilitation services across NHS, third sector and health and social care partnerships (HSCPs). The toolkit provides an overview of the full prehabilitation pathway as well as access to a digital version of the national cancer prehabilitation screening tool.
The cancer prehabilitation for healthcare professionals toolkit includes:
- Cancer prehabilitation pathway – this section provides an overview of the full cancer prehabilitation pathway.
- Prehabilitation screening resources – this section includes resources to support multimodal prehabilitation screening. The resources include a multimodal screening stratification tool and screening questionnaires for physical activity, nutrition, psychological support and general lifestyle. The screening tools are available in digital and PDF formats to allow healthcare professionals flexibility as to how screening is implemented locally. These tools are designed to be used by a healthcare professional with a patient. For teams who require patients to complete screening questionnaires independently, a patient toolkit has also been created.
The cancer prehabilitation toolkit offers guidance for people over the age of 18 years.
