Individuals with cancer and their families assume responsibility for management of cancer as an acute and chronic disease. Yet, cancer lags other chronic diseases in its provision of proactive self-management support (SMS) in routine ‘everyday’ care leaving this population vulnerable to worse health status, long-term disability and poorer survival. Enabling cancer patients to manage the medical, emotional consequences, and lifestyle/work changes due to cancer and treatment is essential to optimizing health and recovery across the continuum of cancer. In this paper, the Global Partners on Self-Management in Cancer (GPS) puts forth six priority areas for action. Action 1: Prepare patients/survivors for active involvement in care. Action 2: Shift the care culture to support patients as partners in co-creating health and embed self-management support in everyday health care provider practices and in care pathways. Action 3: Prepare the workforce in the knowledge and skills necessary to enable patients in effective self-management and reach consensus on core curricula. Action 4: Establish and reach consensus on a patient reported outcome system for measuring the effects of self-management support and performance accountability. Action 5: Advance the evidence and stimulate research on self-management and self-management support in cancer populations. Action 6: Expand reach and access to self-management support programs across care sectors and tailored to diversity of need, and stimulation of research to advance knowledge. It’s time for a revolution to better integrate self-management support as part of high quality, person-centered support and precision medicine in cancer care to optimize health outcomes, accelerate recovery and possibly improve survival.

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Objective Existing research indicates that moderate‐to‐vigorous physical activity (PA) alleviates treatment side effects and is associated with survival in men with prostate cancer. We aimed to ascertain the state of research investigating barriers and facilitators to PA in men with prostate cancer and synthesise existing qualitative research on this topic. Methods A systematic review of qualitative and quantitative studies was conducted. MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, Web of Knowledge, CINAHL, PEDro, OATD, and WorldCat were searched to June 2019 for quantitative studies investigating causes or predictors of PA or qualitative studies describing patient‐reported barriers/facilitators to PA, amongst men with prostate cancer of any stage. Thirty‐two studies (n = 17 quantitative; n = 15 qualitative) were included from 3698 screened articles. Results Heterogeneity and unsystematic reporting of quantitative study methods prohibited a quantitative data synthesis. Thematic synthesis of qualitative studies produced five analytical themes: individual needs by treatment pathway, self‐determination and its relationship with prostate cancer‐related events, co‐ordination and support of the clinical care team, individual preferences in discrete aspects of PA engagement style, and the potential for a bidirectional facilitative relationship between structured group PA and spontaneous peer support. Both qualitative and quantitative studies indicated incontinence as a barrier. Conclusions Unsystematic reporting of interventions hinders a robust quantitative understanding of behavioural intervention research in this subject area. Good co‐ordination of multidisciplinary care personnel could facilitate PA, by enabling a more comprehensive approach to targeting social cognitive processes. Well‐timed intervention and access to highly individualised PA support, including optional group PA classes, seem to also be important facilitators.

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The evidence relating to the effects of exercise in bladder cancer is very limited and is even less for psychosocial interventions.

A clinical pathway for patients with PCa improved the implementation of evidence-based strategies for the management of ADT-induced side effects. A clinical pathway could serve as a method to bridge the gap between evidence-based guidelines and daily clinical practice.

Objective: To explore the determinants of physical activity in patients with bladder cancer before and after radical cystectomy. Design: A qualitative research design using semi-structured face-to-face interviews. Setting and subjects: A total of 30 interviews were conducted with people diagnosed with bladder cancer and treated with radical cystectomy at Ghent University Hospital. Main measures: The interviews were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. Framework analysis with constant comparison between and within interviews was applied until final topics were derived from interpreting the data. Results: Physical activity behavior in patients with bladder cancer is determined multifactorial with condition-related (e.g. urinary symptoms, comorbidities), therapy-related (e.g. fatigue, diarrhea), patient-related (e.g. outcome expectations, coping skills, definitions of physical activity), social/economic-related (e.g. social support, attractive environment) and health system–related (e.g. physicians’ advice, information) factors. Conclusion: The results of this study can guide the development of theory-based behavior change interventions to increase physical activity in bladder cancer patients.

Background There exists scant evidence on the optimal approaches to integrating patient-reported outcomes (PROs) in clinical practice. This study gathered oncology practitioners’ experiences with implementing PROs in cancer care. Methods Between December 2019 and June 2020, we surveyed practitioners who reported spending > 5% of their time providing clinical care to cancer patients. Respondents completed an online survey describing their experiences with and barriers to using PROs in clinical settings. Results In total, 362 practitioners (physicians 38.7%, nurses 46.7%, allied health professionals 14.6%) completed the survey, representing 41 countries (Asia–Pacific 42.5%, North America 30.1%, Europe 24.0%, others 3.3%). One quarter (25.4%) identified themselves as “high frequency users” who conducted PRO assessments on > 80% of their patients. Practitioners commonly used PROs to facilitate communication (60.2%) and monitor treatment responses (52.6%). The most commonly reported implementation barriers were a lack of technological support (70.4%) and absence of a robust workflow to integrate PROs in clinical care (61.5%). Compared to practitioners from high-income countries, more practitioners in low-middle income countries reported not having access to a local PRO expert ( P < .0001) and difficulty in identifying the appropriate PRO domains ( P = .006). Compared with nurses and allied health professionals, physicians were more likely to perceive disruptions in clinical care during PRO collection ( P = .001) as an implementation barrier. Conclusions Only a quarter of the surveyed practitioners reported capturing PROs in routine clinical practice. The implementation barriers to PRO use varied across respondents in different professions and levels of socioeconomic resources. Our findings can be applied to guide planning and implementation of PRO collection in cancer care. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00520-021-06545-7.