IPOS News

Organizing Chair: Dr. Surendran Veeraiah
Organizer: Department of Psycho-oncology, Cancer Institute (WIA)
Time: 31st January & 1st February, 2020

The International Psycho-Oncology Society Academy 2020 was held in Chennai, India from 31st January to 1st February, 2020. The Academy was organized by the Department of Psychooncology in Cancer Institute (WIA), one of the national comprehensive cancer centers in India. The focus of the Academy was on ‘Enhancing Psychosocial Practices and Research in India’ and the goal of the program was to train the practicing psycho-oncology professionals on therapeutic skills, strengthening research orientation and networking professionals across the country. The program featured significant inputs from psycho-oncologists, psychiatrists, oncologists, physiotherapists, survivors. Around 130 participants representing various cancer centers across the country attended the program and contributed enthusiastically.

Pre-conference Workshop (Day 1)
The Academy was declared open on 31st January with four parallel pre-conference workshops. This included workshops on Introduction to Level-1 CBT Skills and Management of Specific Symptoms- Chronic Pain, Insomnia and Fatigue by Dr. Maggie Watson, Concept development in research by Dr. Haryana Dhillon, Communication in Oncology by Prof. Richard Fielding and Implementation research: Understanding Principles and Considering Research Applications in Psycho-oncology by Dr. Sudha Sivaram. A total of 130 participants attended the pre-conference workshops with around 40 participants in each. The participants stated that the workshops were of high quality and of great learning experience.

Conference (Day 2)
The day 2 of the Academy was organized as a conference featuring three symposiums, two panel discussion, two plenaries and two master classes. The speakers included eminent psychooncologists, oncologists, psychiatrists, physiotherapists, survivors from across the country. The sessions featured important inputs from the speakers on the psychosocial, behavioural aspects of cancer care in India with special attention to the way forward. Recent updates in psychotherapies by Dr. Maggie Watson, Emerging trends and strengthening psycho-oncology research in India by Prof. Richard Fielding, Establishing psycho-oncology collaborative study groups by Dr. Haryana Dhillon, panel discussions on communication in oncology moderated by Dr Prasanth Ganesan and rehabilitation of cancer survivors by Dr Ramanan were few sessions rated highly significant by the attendees. In addition to the scientific sessions, oral and e-poster presentations were facilitated evaluated by Dr Subathra Jeyaram, Dr Soumitra Datta and Mr M.S Satish. Around 34 abstracts were received and were evaluated anonymously by the scientific committee to be chosen for oral and e-poster presentations. Five from the abstracts reviewed were chosen as ‘Best Clinical Implication Paper’ and were awarded during the program.

The Academy was well-received by the participants and they found the sessions intriguing, impactful and essential to their practice.

The Academy concluded with an announcement on the APPON 7 which is to be held by Cancer Institute (WIA) in January 2021 in Chennai. The participants expressed their desire to be a part of and attend the APPON meeting in the following year.

List of national faculties who contributed significantly towards the success of the academy:

Dr. Jayita Deodhar
Dr. Brindha Sitaram
Dr. Vidhubala
Dr. Chitra Venkateswaran
Ms. Savita Goswami
Dr. Mahati Chittem
Dr. Rejiv Rajendranath
Dr. Krishnakumar Rathinam
Dr. Arun Seshachalam
Dr. Ponni Sivaprakasam
Dr. Vandana Dhamankar
Dr. Alexander
Dr. Arvind Krishnamurthy
Dr. Nikita Mehra
Dr. Anand Raja
Dr. Sridevi
Dr. Kalpana Balakrishnan
Dr. Venkatesh
Mr. Vijay Srinivasan
Dr. Vasanth Christopher
Dr. Jeyachandran

ZAMBIAN EXPERIENCE BY BENEDICT AKIMANA

I am excited to share my travel experience to Zambia to represent the International Psycho-oncology Society (IPOS) at the Zambia National Stakeholder Workshop on Childhood Cancer which took place on February 13, 2020. I would like to thank IPOS for making my travel possible on short notice and St Jude Children’s Hospital for hosting me.

The meeting was well attended with representatives from the Zambia ministry of health, WHO country representative, International Atomic Energy Association, International Society of Paediatric Oncology, childhood cancer survivors and clinicians from neighboring African countries and world over.

The goal of the workshop was to connect National priorities to commitments and global targets. Objectives were; to summarise current landscape and priorities for cancer control in children and adolescents in Zambia, introduce the concepts of WHO CURE All and defining core projects to accelerate progress for children and adolescents with cancer in Zambia between 2020-2023.

The day’s event was very successful with the various stakeholders affirming their commitment towards ensuring that every child and adolescent with cancer has access to adequate treatment and care. Among the highlights was a testimony from a cancer survivor who shared her experience through the treatment process in India, she noted how difficult it was for her losing most of her friends on the ward, how her mother had to act strong, yet deep down she saw how distressed and helpless she was but had to soldier on!

Notably, the psychosocial well-being of persons with cancer is not given as much attention especially in our African setting, but we are happy with the direction that IPOS has taken to support psycho-oncology in LMIC. I am happy to inform you that beginning of February the Zambian psychiatry team has started ward rounds to the cancer wards. Kudos!

On January 31, the IPOS Academy held a three day training about effective communication skills in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Eighteen participants (including physicians, nurses and psychologists) attended the training. IPOS Early Career Director, Yeva Asribabayan, developed and implemented the training program. On the first day of the training, the participants got familiar with various communication techniques and practiced their skills during the role-plays. On the second day, the training focused on building the capacity of the participants for working with difficult emotions and for the provision of bad news. On the third day, the participants got familiar with the peculiarities of the communication with paediatric patients and with the challenges of professional burnout. Furthermore, Yeva Asribabayan introduced the Balint Group model as an effective method for the prevention of burnout – which has never been done before in Kyrgyzstan. The training was initiated by First Children Hospice in Bishkek and Red Crescent Society of Kyrgyzstan, organized with a sponsorship of IPOS. It became the first event of this kind in Kyrgyzstan.

Photographed by Anna Ilyasova

Register before April 1 to take advantage of the Early Bird Rate. To save even more money, be sure to activate your IPOS membership for 2020 before registering for the Congress (IPOS members receive preferred rates).

To join IPOS for 2020, please go to: https://ipos-society.org/Membership

To view Congress pricing, as well as to register, please go to http://ipos2020.com/registration/index.html

You are invited to take part in a survey being conducted by run by Dr Ursula Sansom-Daly and her team at the University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia investigating how end-of-life (EoL) care and communication for adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with cancer is delivered by clinicians working with AYAs, and to obtain professional consensus around what their needs/preferences are for training in EoL communication with AYAs with cancer. We are looking for multi-disciplinary healthcare professionals who have been involved with end-of-life care and communication with at least 5 patients between the ages of 15-39 years who have died from cancer.
 
The questionnaire is entirely online and in two parts. The first should take approximately 20 minutes to complete, the second will be sent 8 weeks later and take approximately 15 minutes to complete.
 
You will be asked questions about your demographic characteristics (e.g., your age, sex); timing of EoL communication and psychosocial issues; and what type of EoL communication-training is most needed and preferred. Survey items will cover relevant content (e.g., timing of discussions; psychosocial issues at EoL; techniques for broaching difficult topics), and format issues (e.g, length/frequency of training; modality of training e.g., face-to-face, online, etc).
 
Please note, as the survey is in two parts we will ask you to provide your contact details so we can send you the second survey.
 
If you are interested in participating please follow the link below to the full information statement and online survey.
 
https://unsw.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6PxNeyZxr22H5EV
 
If you would like any further information about the study please contact Dr Ursula Sansom-Daly via phone (+612) 9382 3114) or email ([email protected]).
 
If you have any concerns or complaints about the conduct of this study you should contact the Research Support Office of the South Eastern Sydney Local Health District Human Research Ethics Committee on 02 9382 3587, or email [email protected] and quote 18-104.

There are 19 options to choose from (English and Japanese options).

1. Cross-cultural validation of patient-reported outcome (PRO) measurements: challenges and solutions (ENGLISH)

By Juhee Cho & Danbee Kang

2. Couple Counselling as a Part of Psycho-Social Care in Oncology (ENGLISH)

By Marta I. Porebiak

3. Behavioral Activation for Cancer Patients (in Japanese)

By Shin-ichi Suzuki

4. Demoralization in cancer care: diagnosis and treatment (ENGLISH)

By David Kissane, Anja Mehnert-Theuerkauf, Luigi Grassi, Chun-Kai Fang, Sigrun Vehling & Rebecca Philipp

5. Integrative Model of Cancer Experience in Children and Teenagers through the use of Art (ENGLISH)

By Olimpia Petzold Rodriguez

6. WHO CARES FOR THE THERAPISTS and THE CAREGIVERS AND HOW TO REMAIN WELL AND HEALTHY WHILE CARING FOR OTHERS? (ENGLISH)

By Peter Mai

7. Mindfulness-based, compassion-oriented self-care program for health professionals (Japanese session)

By Daisuke Fujisawa & Sunre Park

8. ACT – An Introduction into Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in Cancer Patients (ENGLISH)

By Gregor Weissflog & Helge Danker

9. CBT for People with Cancer (ENGLISH)

By Stirling Moorey

10. How to run a family meeting (ENGLISH)

By David Kissane

11. Group interventions targeting executive functions and decision-making in survivors of non-CNS cancer (ENGLISH)

By Ayala Bloch & Limor Sharoni

12. Expressive Arts Therapy Interventions for relieving emotional and physical suffering in Cancer patients (ENGLISH)

By Peter Mai

13.ECPP - IPOS Early Career Professionals in Psycho-Oncology (ECPP) committee (ENGLISH)

14. Managing Cancer and Living Meaningfully (CALM) Workshop (ENGLISH)

By Gary Rodin & Sarah Hales

15. Navigating through Life Adversities with “Kindfulness”: The Theory and Practice of Self-Compassion for Healthcare Professionals in Cancer Care (ENGLISH)

By Adrian H.Y. Wan

16. How to start your research (ENGLISH)

By Christoffer Johansen

17. Communication and Challenging Discussions at the End of Life (ENGLISH)

By Darius Razavi

18. How should Clinician-Rated Clinical Outcome Assessments (COAs) be developed and used in oncology research and clinical practice? (ENGLISH)

By Katharina Vogt & Georgina Jones

19. Managing fear of cancer recurrence in cancer survivors with individual or group therapy (ENGLISH)

By Sophie Lebel, Christine Maheu, Phyllis Butow, Louise Sharpe & Jane Turner

Find out more by going to http://ipos2020.com/program/ws.html

From November 2 to December 19, 2019 IPOS organised the first pilot Psycho-Oncology Upskilling Training for psychiatrists, psychologist, counsellors and mental health nurses in Turkey. The training was completed in a total of 36 hours and was the first short training program in psycho-oncology that has an integrated supervised placement component in Turkey, which is accredited and recognised by a higher education institute; Istanbul Aydin University.

The aim of this course is to understand cancer, to gain communication skills to support patients and their caregivers in all stages of treatment, to be equipped with psycho-oncological measurement tools and introduce intervention methods, as well as to obtain ethical information about the treatment processes. In the training, differences of paediatric and adult oncology have been distinguished and delivered by the comprehensive multidisciplinary team which are the members of the Psycho-Oncology Association; Psychiatrist Muzaffer Uyar, Health Psychologist Ozan Bahcivan, Specialist Psychologists Elif Ozluk and Zeynep Yazici, Oncologist Basak Adali Aksoy as well as Oncology Nurse Rabia Tulubas.

Trainees showed great interest to the program, and received positive feedbacks, such as; “I’m so glad to take this course as it provided me the core knowledge about psycho-oncology.”

We thank all the trainees, Istanbul Aydin University and Medical Park Bahcelievler Hospital for their cooperation, and IPOS Education committee for their assistance in the developmental of learning materials. We hope to offer this program again in 2020 to the wider health care professionals, such as for social workers.

 

  

  

  

On behalf of the IPOS management and Board we wish all good tidings for the holiday season. We had a great 2019, and could not have done it without all the amazing volunteers and members from around the World! Some major highlights:

• For the third year in a row, IPOS broke its own membership record! We now have more than 600 members across 96 countries.
• Launched our NEW IPOS Journal – Journal of Psychosocial Oncology Research and Practice – with the help of the amazing editorial board.
• Held a very successful World Congress, in partnership with the Canadian Association of Psychosocial Oncology, in Banff, Canada with almost 700 attendees from 50 countries.
• Launched five new webcast recordings – FREE to IPOS members.
• Added several new translations to the FREE MAC Scale offering. Now available in 21 languages!
• And much more… 

With this holiday message we bring news of change for 2020.

 
We bid goodbye to Anthony Laycock at the end of this year and welcome John Chagnon as Executive Director starting on January 1, 2020. John has been working with IPOS for several years and is a familiar name to many of our members. The management office will continue to support the work of the Society, the Board and the various committees who work on your behalf, all as volunteers, to advance the interests of our members. Anthony expresses gratitude to all members for allowing him the honour of serving as Executive Director. The email address [email protected] is now being re-directed to John Chagnon at [email protected].
 
The IPOS office will be closed on December 24, 2019 and will reopen on January 2, 2020. During this period, please note:

• Individuals can still easily renew/join online for 2020. Current members need only log into their membership profile to renew while new members can go to https://ipos-society.org/Membership
• Details on the 2020 IPOS World Congress can be found by going to http://ipos2020.com/. Any questions or comments about the World Congress can be directed to [email protected]. Remember, the final abstract submission deadline is January 1, 2020!
• Many of our board members and volunteers will not have access to email over the holidays. All will do their best to respond as quickly as possible once they are back in their offices.

All of us wish you the best and safe holiday season.

For the first time ever, IPOS has its first ever board member on the ECCO Board of Directors for the 2020-2021 period. We are pleased to report that Csaba Dégi (Romania) will be representing IPOS and Psycho-social Oncology on the European CanCer Organisation (ECCO).

Congratulations to Csaba and all the incoming ECCO board of directors. 

Find out more by going to https://www.ecco-org.eu/About-Ecco/Organisation/Board-of-Directors

About ECCO:

Through its 27 Member Societies - representing over 150 000 professionals - ECCO is the only multidisciplinary organisation that connects and responds to all stakeholders in oncology Europe-wide. ECCO is a not-for-profit federation that exists to uphold the right of all European cancer patients to the best possible treatment and care, promoting interaction between all organisations involved in cancer at European level. It does this by creating awareness of patients’ needs and wishes, encouraging progressive thinking in cancer policy, training and education and promoting European cancer research, prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care.

Cancer Institute (WIA), Chennai presents IPOS ACADEMY 2020

Theme: Enhancing Psycho-oncology Practices and Researches in India

DATE: 31st Jan & 1st Feb, 2020
VENUE: GRT Grand, Chennai

Cancer Institute (WIA), Chennai in close partnership with the International Psycho-oncology Society (IPOS), has developed an Academy on the theme of Enhancing Psycho-oncology Practices and Researches in India. The objective of this Academy is to train the participants and professionals on evidence-based practices in distress management, application of psychotherapies, communication training and strengthening research pertaining to psychooncology. This Academy will be a combination of panel discussions, plenaries, symposiums and presentations in which participants will be encouraged to share their knowledge on the specified areas and will aid in facilitating research collaboration between the professionals from different institutions.

Register now at www.cancerinstitutewia.in

Download the Academy Brochure for complete details.