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Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has fundamentally disrupted the practice of oncology, shifting care onto virtual platforms, rearranging the logistics and economics of running a successful clinical practice and research, and in some contexts, redefining what treatments patients with cancer should and can receive. Since the start of the pandemic in early 2020, there has been considerable emphasis placed on the implications for patients with cancer in terms of their vulnerability to the virus and potential exposure in healthcare settings. But little emphasis has been placed on the significant, and potentially enduring, consequences of COVID-19 for how cancer care is delivered. In this article, we outline the importance of a focus on the effects of COVID-19 for oncology practice during and potentially after the pandemic, focusing on key shifts that are already evident, including: the pivot to online consultations, shifts in access to clinical trial and definitions of "essential care," the changing economics of practice, and the potential legacy effects of rapidly implemented changes in cancer care. COVID-19 is reshaping oncology practice, clinical trials, and delivery of cancer care broadly, and these changes might endure well beyond the short-to mid-term of the active pandemic. Therefore, shifts in practice brought about by the pandemic must be accompanied by improved training and awareness, enhanced infrastructure, and evidence-based support if they are to harness the positives and offset the potential negative consequences of the impacts of COVID-19 on cancer care.

Caring for the dying presents perhaps the most challenging site of informal care. Participation in informal caring roles in such contexts has been prone to reification as a virtuous social practice, often without critical reflection as to the implications for caregivers. Here, drawing on interviews with carers who were providing care in the last few weeks or days of life, we develop an understanding of informal care in this setting as a morally ambiguous social practice, framed by social relations of duty, gift and virtue, but in turn encapsulating experiences of failure, shame and suffering. Such a contradictory understanding of caregiving is critical for understanding the tensions within end-of-life settings and also for countering the concealments produced by the valorization of informal care more broadly in modern societies. We present a critical analysis of informal care's contested character at the end of life, challenging normative understandings that are complicit in producing moral ambivalence, shame and suffering for individual carers.

The opening years of the 21st century have witnessed the rise of 'global health' as the preferred label for attempts to govern the health of the global population. In this article, I locate the epistemological origins of global health in the introduction of the Disability Adjusted Life Year (DALY) metric in the World Bank's Investing in Health report. I argue that the DALY metric accomplishes an economization of life by disaggregating lifetimes into component units of time and reassembling life as a revenue stream to be maximized through practices of self-investment in one's own health -configured here as human capital. Life is reimagined as time and the individual as a neoliberal homo oeconomicus: as an entrepreneur of the self. I argue that the DALY metric is best conceived as a biopolitical technology of power that underpins the contemporary neoliberal global health regime.

The ‘typical’ trajectory of a person with cancer has been from diagnosis, through treatment, and towards cure (life) or the end of life (death). Yet, cancer survivorship as a social practice is no longer contained by such neat categorisations. Much of the lived experience of cancer now centres on: living with, rather than beyond, disease; the perpetuity of treatment rather than the spectre of disease; and, making sense of incurability. Using a solicited diary methodology, in this article the authors seek to chronicle life with cancer for those living in the in-between – the often-overlooked lives of incurable survivors. In the analysis of survivors’ diaries, the authors argue for an emphasis on the phenomenology of waiting and sociological exploration of how clinical prognostications affectively haunt the present. This, they posit, will further sociological understandings of the lived experience of affliction and care, especially within relations of chronicity and perpetuity, in this case focusing on advanced cancer and the steadily changing oncological milieu.

Men are increasingly participating, and acknowledging their roles, as informal carers. Yet, there has been comparatively little exploration of their experiences therein, especially within the context of cancer care. Here, drawing on semi-structured qualitative interviews with 16 Australian male carers for a relative with cancer, and using constructivist grounded theory, we explore their experiences of informal caring. Our analysis highlights a series of tensions, including the following: the meanings and practicalities of care provision including notions of reciprocity, duty, autonomy, and interdependence; the discomforts of dependency and vulnerability; and the complicated moralities that inflect “caring well.” Given the shifting dynamics around informal care, we argue for increased attention to the affective tensions that arise at the nexus of moralities and masculinities in informal caring relations, especially as they are articulated in the context of illness, affliction, and dependency.

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ObjectivesThis study responds to calls for greater focus on nursing roles, and the need for nursing integration within the antimicrobial optimisation agenda. The objective of this study was to explore Australian hospital nurses’ views on antimicrobial resistance and antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) in a hospital setting, in order to better understand the opportunities for and challenges to integration of nursing staff in antimicrobial optimisation within hospital settings.DesignQualitative one-on-one, semistructured interviews. Interview transcripts were digitally audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data were subject to thematic analysis supported by the framework approach and informed by sociological methods and theory.SettingFour hospitals (three public and one private), across metropolitan, regional and remote areas, in two Australian states.Participants86 nurses (77 females, 9 males), from a range of hospital departments, at a range of career stages.ResultsFindings were organised into three thematic domains: (1) the current peripheral role of nurses in AMS; (2) the importance of AMS as a collaborative effort, and current tensions around interprofessional roles and (3) how nurses can bolster antimicrobial optimisation within AMS and beyond.ConclusionNursing staff are central to infection management within the hospital and are thus ideally located to enhance antibiotic optimisation and contribute to AMS governance. However, without increased interprofessional cooperation, education and integration in the AMS agenda, as well as addressing organisational/resource constraints in the hospital, the nursing role in stewardship will remain limited.