COVID-19 Pandemic made us redesign our Services – adjusting to New Normal
Unfortunately, after more than two years we are still having Covid -19 virus among us. There has already been over one million verified Covid -19 cases in Finland and much more if we consider cases which aren`t verified officially. The incidence in June was 350 cases/ 14 days/ 100, 000 inhabitants. Past two years have been very difficult for cancer patients with low immunity causing isolation and anxiety during the pandemic. This anxiety id now added to be the uncertainty of the global peace and can be heard in conversations with cancer patients.
In the beginning of the pandemic, we had to start working remotely and the situation made us think new ways to provide our genetic counselling services which used to be a face-to-face appointments. We decided to move the whole process online as Teams -meetings and phone calls. The same had to be done with our courses for BRCA 1/2 gene defect carriers and ones already having cancer. These both changes have been successes as patients being online has been an easy and practical way to meet and patients don`t have to travel from long distances.
Even if we can slowly move back to where we were before, things have changed for good. Our chat service is more and more used by the elderly and patients are now used to remote services and wish to use them in the future as well. Innovating new hybrid models for the services should be taken into consideration.
In European Week Against Cancer, we focused on skin cancer. In Finland melanoma diagnoses decreased 15% in 2020 because of a difficult Covid -19 situation in health care and partly because people didn`t seek care for their symptoms. Finnish Cancer Registry estimates that there will be much more new melanoma cases diagnosed in next few years. There was also a publication in International Journal of Cancer by Nordic Cancer Registries and Karolinska Institute that number of reported new cancer cases decreased 24% in 2020 compared to year 2019 in Finland because of the same reasons. These are the facts we are facing in near future and must be considered in CIS as well by assuring that we have enough resources to answer these growing demands.
Finnish National Cancer Information Service has a 30-year anniversary this year. Over the decades we have been able to provide reliable information and support to cancer patients and their next of kin and grow over past years. It is evident that CIS is still very much needed, but it is important that we keep up with the changing operational environment, answer to new demands and develop our services by listening carefully to cancer patients and their next of kins needs.
Contact details for more questions
Cancer Society of Finland