OXBOW - “You have cancer.”
Where do you go from here?
Sarah Taylor, who is an RN, chose to write a thesis on women diagnosed with cancer in rural Saskatchewan entitled Rural Women’s Perspectives on Cancer Care in Â鶹ÊÓƵern Saskatchewan.
The purpose of the study was to explore the experiences and perceptions of women living with cancer who reside in rural areas in southern Saskatchewan regarding their met and unmet care needs.
The goal of her method interpretive description, was to form a deeper understanding about the experiences of women living in rural Saskatchewan who have been diagnosed with cancer.
Taylor recently made a trip out to a support group in Moosomin to interview three women and their experiences living with cancer in rural Saskatchewan.
One thing Taylor noticed during her interviews was that people have a lot of empathy. The young people comment ‘I don’t know how anyone that’s older could do this…this is really tough’ and then the older people comment ‘well I don’t know how you do that if you have little people to look after’. Both sides are saying the same thing and truly meaning it.
And her survey showed her that people have a lot of resilience.
Some of her findings include their feelings going from a normal life to chaos. Along with that comes anxiety and worry, loneliness, humour, gratitude and hope.
For rural women they deal with travel, travel and more travel. First to multiple doctor’s appointments, and then treatments and followups.
Growing up in a rural area, Taylor is well aware of how rural women deal with their experience.
Originally from Carievale, Taylor has had a few different roles over her 10-year career as an RN. She was first employed in Estevan for a few years and then at the Cancer Clinic in Regina.
She was teaching nursing and has now moved to a position in managing since moving this past May back to the farm where she grew up.
“One of the findings of my thesis was how a nurse navigator specific to rural women would be beneficial in addressing a lot of the things they told me at the support group.”
Taylor recommends that this role would be beneficial to many rural communities.
Some areas have nurse navigators but we don’t have them in Saskatchewan right now, definitely not specifically to rural.
Taylor goes on to explain:
“One of the biggest findings in my research was that rural women were very resilient and very self-efficient.”
“They all took initiative in finding information even some of that information was hard to come by. One of the other findings is that they use social media as support because there’s not a lot of in-person psychological support in rural areas.”
“Another one of my recommendations was to incorporate social media into health care teaching.”
“I felt because they (rural women) are so self-efficient that if they had that one go-to person to help them find information, that would be really beneficial.”
Taylor had met with the support group in Moosomin who did say that’s exactly what they would need – that go-to person.
“When I was speaking with the women at the support group in Moosomin, a lot of them were overwhelmed by the information dump that you get at the Cancer Clinic after your first appointment,” says Taylor.
“If they would have had a go-to person living in a rural area who understood rural health as well as cancer that person could answer their questions.”
“The social workers at the Cancer Clinic are really good about finding resources for those diagnosed with breast cancer,” explains Taylor.
