Learning from Best Practices

Take the Survey on Cancer Screening Best Practices

The estimated worldwide expense of cancer is expected to climb to an astonishing $25 trillion (US) by 2050. Implementing proper screening procedures and detecting cancer early is crucial for enhancing treatment and boosting survival.

Significant progress has been made in establishing screening programmes for breast, cervical, and colorectal cancers in Europe, Updates in 2022 provided even more ambitious goals, extending this effort to six tumour types (breast, cervical, colorectal, gastric, lung and prostate). Nevertheless, it is essential for these programmes to comply with quality assurance and professional standards, recognising that not all criteria are consistently applied at present.

Your experience, in your country, is essential for us all to understand and improve national screening policies. A central part of the ‘Time to Accelerate: for Cancer Screening’ campaign is therefore dedicated to the collection of on-the-ground testimonies from across the European cancer community.

The surveys main objectives include:

• Collect opinions from oncology professionals, patient advocates, and others on national screening programmes;
• Document and evaluate current best practices to be promoted at a European level; and
• Discover new screening technologies and protocols that could be implemented.

Best practices are approaches considered to be the most up-to-date and effective for optimising patient outcomes.

The survey deadline was extended to 31 May. Respondent groups include but are not limited to: oncology professionals, patient advocates, and person with experience and interest in cancer screening.

Workstream 2 focuses on bringing testimonies from leading national experts who develop and implement cancer screening policies in order to better understand and document what best practices can be learned from. In particular, we will listen to healthcare professionals and collect their testimonies.

Workstream 2 is also interested in the testimonies of patients, those who have benefited from early diagnosis through cancer screening or who have been affected by poor levels of access to cancer screening.

Your stories can bring about change. Contact screening@europeancancer.org to bring your story forward.

Background

The stories collected below present the narratives of healthcare professionals involved in breast, cervical, colorectal, lung, prostate and gastric cancer screening, and tell us how the current practice of performing these screenings can be improved, made more inclusive, effective and efficient. These powerful narratives are essential to understanding the challenges that cancer care providers face every day.

In addition, we have also solicited personal testimonies from cancer patients, hearing about their experiences and realising that just as for many of them early diagnosis and screening has been able to make a significant impact on their course of treatment, for others these opportunities have been missed. These powerful stories show us that the daily challenges patients face are many and often not all stories end well.