Enabling personalized needs-based cancer patient navigation using a caring life-course approach

Objectives: Evidence suggests that patient navigation can help address ongoing barriers to accessing timely, appropriate, and quality cancer care. Patient navigation interventions include education, logistical, social, and emotional support, facilitating referrals, care coordination, patient advocacy, and enabling self-management. We propose that a person-centered approach to cancer patient navigation could be strengthened by the Caring Life-Course Theory (CLCT). Methods: This discussion paper draws on relevant evidence, policy, and theory to propose a way of considering patient navigation service provision reflective of personal biographies, lived experiences, social networks, and broader structural, community, and healthcare contexts. Results: A CLCT-informed, personalized, needs-based patient navigation program in cancer care would facilitate a wider range of patient-centered choices and optimize self-management and self-care by integrating biographical inquiry and care networks, thus improving the delivery and personalization of navigation services. Enhanced technology should be used to support a dynamic approach to patient navigation and develop biographically informed assessment tools and care plans that triage patients to different levels of navigation according to patient needs, self-care abilities, and capacity. Conclusions: We propose that a person-centered, needs-based approach to patient navigation can be informed by the CLCT, taking into consideration the holistic needs of people affected by cancer and developing approaches to optimize self-management and self-care in relation to these needs. Implications for Nursing Practice: Cancer nurses, as holistic care providers, are well-positioned to lead the development and delivery of biographically and social network-informed navigation needs, assessments, and structured patient navigation services.