BY NORM TOLLINSKY
Date Published | Sept. 20, 2007

Cancer patients and their families in rural and remote communities across northeastern Ontario don’t have far to go to learn about the disease they’re battling.

Thanks to funding from the Sudbury-based Regional Cancer Program, cancer patients and caregivers have access to a large selection of books, pamphlets and videos in chemotherapy clinics and public libraries in 20 communities.
Staff at Sudbury Regional Hospital’s Health Sciences Library spent a few days in August packing up hundreds of new books and other resources to add to the growing collections.

“It’s a way to reach out and give people the opportunity to access good quality learning resources,” said librarian Jami van Haaften. “We also believe that the knowledge the clients will receive from this material will allow them to develop a better patient-professional relationship. By knowing what questions to ask, they will get the answers they seek and will not necessarily go away feeling frustrated or angry.”

The library at the Sudbury Regional Hospital’s Cancer Centre is convenient for local patients, but people from smaller communities such as Cochrane, Kapuskasing and Wawa “may only come here once to see an oncologist and then return home,” she said.
Staff at the former Northeastern Ontario Regional Cancer Care Centre came up with the idea in 2000 to improve access to information about breast cancer and a grant of close to $40,000 – enough to cover the cost of 66 titles for 20 sites – was approved by the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.

The Regional Cancer Program provided funding in 2006 and again this year to expand the collections to cover prostate cancer, colon and rectal cancer and survivorship issues, “so, now, the libraries are pretty comprehensive because they’re covering so many more topics,” said van Haaften.

At first, the idea was to locate the material at oncology clinics where they would be accessible to patients undergoing chemotherapy treatment, but not all of them were equipped to offer the service. Today, public libraries in 12 of the 20 communities have taken on responsibility for the collections because they have the staff and infrastructure and are better able to serve the public.

Every title selected is reviewed and approved by the Sudbury hospital’s Patient Education Committee consisting of library staff, nurses and other health care professionals. To guide patients to authoritative Internet sources, the committee also reviews and recommends web sites.

Clinic staff around the region provide patients with pamphlets listing the resources available. There are also search request forms that patients can fill out and fax to the Sudbury hospital’s Health Sciences Library to receive a package of books, pamphlets and videos to address specific information needs.

Nothing makes librarians happier than filling up bookshelves, but the subject matter of the titles distributed by the Sudbury hospital library and the use to which they are put makes their work especially rewarding.

“Hopefully, it will make people’s lives easier and help them navigate what they’re going through,” said library assistant Robin Desmeules.

Added colleague Linda Fortunato, “It’s a project that we’re all really proud of.”

www.cancer.ca
www.hrsrh.on.ca
www.cancer.gov
www.canadian-health-network.ca
www.breastnorth.info