More and more providers are recognizing that prehabilitation and rehabilitation are key components of successful patient-centered cancer care. Oncology nurses serve as a critical access point to those services and must understand rehabilitation and its indications. To better highlight cancer rehabilitation’s benefits and importance in clinical practice, ONS members Grace Campbell, PhD, MSW, RN, CNL, CRRN, and Beverly Reigle, PhD, RN, shared a conversation about the finer points of cancer rehabilitation specialty practice.

Frank, a 74-year-old man, was referred to the oncology clinic for workup on a suspicious lung nodule. Frank tells Justin, the oncology nurse, that he blames himself for smoking “all these years.” He also reports that up until nine months ago, he played 18 holes of golf twice a week, but “now I just don’t have the stamina.”

Prehabilitation should be driven by outcomes that start with baseline assessments that are repeated in an effort to determine how well the interventions worked.

Prehabilitation is a process along the cancer care continuum that occurs after diagnosis but before treatment begins. In a sense, it’s preparing patients for their battle ahead by introducing psychological and physical interventions “that establish a baseline functional level, identify impairments, and provide targeted interventions that improve a patient’s health to reduce the incidence and the severity of current and future impairments," according to Silver and Baima.