Susan Sabo-Wagner, MSN, RN, OCN, executive director of clinical strategy for Oncology Consultants of Houston, Texas, discussed how limited understanding on how to care for one’s health and extenuating circumstances can contribute to a higher likelihood of infection, ineffective health habits, and increased need of resources.
Transcript
What are some of the biggest challenges that your patients may face, if they are receiving cancer care support at home, in their housing conditions?
That's mostly the unsafe areas. Definitely depending on where you live, where you're from, where you reside, you have unsafe neighborhoods. You have home health that may not want to go into those neighborhoods. You might have a great home health network, which might be in that area, but maybe not in that particular area. You have increased risk of infection, because you have people, you think that, “hey, you're gonna be doing fine,” and even maybe in a better area, but they just don't take care of themselves, or they can't take care of themselves, or somebody is supposed to be taking care of them but neglecting them. Then you have increased risk for infection. That's one of the number one things that happens to patients on chemotherapy is they get some sort of infection due to when their immune system is down.
