Essay On Childhood Cancer

Current Healthcare: Childhood Cancer While doing my research for current events in the healthcare system, I ran across quit a few interesting issues. However, the one that caught my attention was related to childhood cancer and how survivors may not get the needed health care when they become adults. Based on the news article children with cancer are less likely to receive follow-up care when they are adults if their parents don’t teach them the importance ("Childhood cancer survivors may not get needed adult care | Fox News," 2016). I chose this article because there are many children these days diagnosed with childhood cancer. As a mother, I couldn’t imagine my child being diagnosed with cancer, let alone teach them about their disease.

With so many people getting diagnosed with cancer, this is important to our current state of heathcare. Children cancer survivors that understood the risk of cancer returning were more likely to seek medical care as an adult (“Fox News,” 2016). Medical facilities do not follow-up with a patient once they are considered cancer free. This is when it is important for the adults of childhood cancers, to know it is their responsibility to continue getting regular follow-up care. In doing so there will be less recurrence of cancers and greater survival rates of patients diagnosed with cancer. Cancer specialist need to incorporate teaching for after the child is released from their care. Being “cancer free” are words parents of children with cancer want to hear. However, sometimes the parents don’t seek any medical care afterwards. This is when it is important to teach the child what can occur later in life due to them having cancer treatments. Many people go to the doctor only when they come down with an illness or something just doesn’t feel right. Patents need to be made aware of what their risk are for illnesses to occur after receiving cancer treatment. The medical profession cannot force patients to receive follow-up care, but I believe if they provided the patient with the information needed there would be less return visits when it might be too late for