Patient Experience
22 March, 2022
Patients who undergo cancer treatments can experience side-effects including reduced fitness, muscle weakness, fatigue, depression, anxiety, which negatively impact survivorship. There is strong scientific evidence that exercise can positively impact many cancer specific side-effects, and physical and mental wellbeing. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound effect on the physical and mental wellbeing of the general population and of people diagnosed with cancer since March 2020. Therefore, there is an urgent need to make exercise accessible to as many cancer survivors as possible, particularly those impacted by COVID-19. We need to do this in a way that considers the resources that we have available to us in both the hospital and the community, and refer people to appropriate services based on their own individual needs.
PERCS is an Irish Cancer Society funded project which will investigate the real-world application of an exercise triage and referral system, supported by an online repository of exercise rehabilitation tools and social prescribing resources specific to Ireland, on physical and psychosocial outcomes in cancer survivors treated during the coronavirus pandemic. The PERCS team, led by Principal Investigator Dr Emer Guinan, Clinical Lead Dr Claire Donohoe and Project Manager Dr Louise Brennan, includes experts in physiotherapy, health psychology, occupational therapy, and dietetics, and patient representatives from the Trinity St James’s Cancer Institute Patient Representative Group.
The PERCS project commenced in January 2022 and is currently working with patient representatives and our multidisciplinary team of health professional and cancer survivorship researchers, to develop a trusted web-resource providing information on exercise rehabilitation for patients and health professionals. The results of the PERCS programme will make exercise information more accessible in Ireland, while the exercise triage and referral system will provide the first patient-centred system for coordinating exercise referral between hospital and community settings in Ireland.