Employment Issues for Cancer Survivors

February 11, 2010

Last week, CT Challenge Survivor Advisory Board member, Amy Kaplan, attended a town hall meeting with President Obama. She was chosen to ask the president a question, and Amy did a great job of framing the highly variable nature of cancer survivors’ employment issues for the president. You can watch her video here (Amy’s question is at the 1:54 minute mark of the video):

The issue that Amy so eloquently framed for President Obama is a very serious one. Cancer survivors are each unique, and their needs are thus unique. It is very difficult (actually impossible) to advise all survivors with a single piece of advice regarding employment after cancer, not to mention employment with or through cancer. One of the problems with this is employment after cancer can be affected by so many other factors, and each of the affecting factors can in turn be affected by each other. It is a horribly dizzying web.

Issues relating to employment can range from physical limitations to fatigue to inability to concentrate. Truthfully, the issues each survivor faces don’t necessarily fall into neatly defined categories. A recent study conducted in Sweden at the Oslo University Hospital investigated differences in perceived work ability between male and female cancer survivors and matched controls who had never been diagnosed with cancer. The study’s results suggest that women feel stronger obstacles than men with respect to working abilities after cancer. Also the study reported that women cancer survivors reported bigger differences in their current working ability with respect to non-cancer-survivor females than did the male cancer survivors with respect to non-cancer-survivor males.

Does this mean that female survivors are at a disadvantage when it comes to can employment after cancer? No. Not at all. The study was based on a mailed questionnaire, and the results are all self reported, so in actuality, the results only suggest that female cancer survivors reported more concern with their current working abilities than did male cancer survivors. This could mean that women are more likely to be open about the issue, or it could mean that women feel more emotion with respect to employment, or it could mean that men processed the questions in different context than did the women. However you choose to interpret the results, you must realize that employment issues are complicated among survivors.

What resources are available to cancer survivors to deal with these significant and complicated employment issues? For the physical issues, occupational and physical therapists can help. To deal with fatigue and mental heath, a survivor’s treating physician should coordinate the care. A survivor’s physician can suggest treatment for the fatigue, and the physician can suggest referrals for mental health therapy.

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