How An Oncology Social Worker Can Help You
Posted on: 24 February 2015
If you have been diagnosed with cancer, you are typically assigned to a medical team that helps you with treatment. This team includes a surgeon, nurse, nutritionist, and more. Included in this team is an oncology social worker. Here's how an oncology social worker will help you during treatment:
- Help You Keep Contact With Family and Friends: Often, when you are dealing with the treatment of cancer, you may begin to experience symptoms that cause you to withdraw from friends and family. Your social worker is there to insist and remind you that family and friends want to help you in this time of need. This is going to help you keep your support system strong and keep you from getting depressed. Most often, cancer patients who withdraw begin to experience signs of depression and don't come to the realization that without their support system, this wave of depression will continue to become stronger and stronger during treatment.
- Educate You About Cancer: An oncology social worker is there to also help you become educated about the cancer to help you better understand what there is to expect when you go in for treatment. This is going to help keep your nerves down to help you experience less stress when the days for treatment come around.
- Keep You Organized: Often when going through cancer treatment, you are not going to want to keep up with organizing all of your medical bills and other paperwork. You may be too tired to do this or away from home too much to bother with it. Your oncology social worker is going to ensure that all of this important paperwork stays organized for you and they will set aside all paperwork that you must bring to certain appointments so that you are staying well prepared for treatment.
- Keep Up With Daily Activities: What most cancer patients don't understand is that they must keep up with daily activities. Exercise and getting out of the house are important for health and recovery. Your oncology social worker is going to help motivate you to get outside on a daily basis, even if it's just to go food shopping or run a couple of errands.
By having an oncologist social worker around, you can be sure that your cancer treatment goes much smoother, thus giving you less to stress about. Work with an oncology clinic, like Southwest Oncology Centers, to get the best care for your situation. Your main focus should be about getting better, after all.
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