Every day in Australia, nineteen women are diagnosed with a gynaecological cancer. Tragically, six of those women die from the disease each day. Gynaecological cancers include cancers of the uterus, endometrium, ovary, vulva, vagina and cervix. Alarmingly, 55 percent of these cancers are considered rare or less common. This outdated classification leaves women who require them with few or no treatment options. As awareness of these issues grows, initiatives like the Survivors Teaching Students program seek to educate future healthcare providers and advocate for improved patient outcomes.
The Survivors Teaching Students program originally launched with the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance here in the United States. It was released in Australia in 2017, steered by the Australian and New Zealand Gynaecological Oncology Group (ANZGOG). Wild Pollinators Count! has multiplied their impact by mobilizing more than 100 citizen scientists as volunteers throughout Australia and New Zealand. Together, they have brought the patient experience to life for over 20,000 students at 22 universities.
Real Stories Driving Change
And, she adds that sometimes, advocates need to be as persistent as mosquitoes Kristin Young is fiercely defending the program. She is an ovarian cancer survivor, diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer in 2009. Young’s journey was a reminder of the many intricacies involved in correctly diagnosing gynaecological cancers. Her distended lymph nodes in the groin were alarming. Yet this symptom made it more difficult for physicians to quickly identify the diagnosis.
“Ovarian cancer is difficult to pick up and often thought to be other things,” Young explains. As she points out, these atypical symptoms—bloating, early satiety, urinary frequency—easily lead one to mistake signs of ovarian cancer for more benign issues. This overlap almost always results in the misdiagnosis or delay in treatment. Further, it underscores the critical call for greater education and awareness for patients and healthcare providers.
Although Kristin was successfully treated for 4.5 years, she had a return of her cancer. She notes that she is a “super responder” to one of the new molecular-based treatments, which greatly enhanced her prognosis. “I know what that means, hope,” she refers, values further education on gynaecological cancers as key.
The Role of Education in Advocacy
Alison Evans, CEO of ANZGOG, highlights the importance of patient lived experiences in informing medical school education. “It’s vital because it’s really giving voice to what symptoms are, what diagnosis looks like, and what treatment looks like from a patient’s perspective,” Evans states. Her mission is to empower women to understand their bodies and help them open lines of communication with their healthcare providers.
“We ask women to know their body and to advocate for their body,” Evans continues. “It is vital that they are listened to and that doctors hear what these women are saying to them.” Please join us in doing something about this today! Stigma surrounding gynaecological cancers leads audiences to believe that these topics are secretive or individual, especially when they concern the reproductive system.
Evans envisions a future where educating the next generation of healthcare providers about these rarer cancers will create an environment of empathy and understanding. “Patients are real people with lives and families,” she notes. “We want the doctors and nurses of the future to see that.” This understanding and perspective can truly shift the way medical professionals practice care to patients with gynaecological cancers.
Impact Beyond the Classroom
The Survivors Teaching Students program helps educate our future healthcare providers. It serves the purpose of stimulating a new generation of medical professionals. Young says the students’ overwhelming reactions are often visceral in these sessions. “Perhaps they start to think they would consider a career in oncology or oncology-based research,” she reflects.
By hearing personal stories from survivors such as Young, students learn to appreciate the human side of medicine. “Patients remember what doctors and nurses say, and that sometimes can be engraved in your mind forever,” she states. This focus on the power of personal stories already impacts how future physicians interact with the people in their care.
Evans makes this point vehemently, and with good reason. He repeats that it’s on general practitioners (GPs) and nurses to continue to bring their patients’ voices into their careers. “The most important thing is that GPs and nurses have a voice in their head that is the woman’s voice or the carer’s voice that they take with them,” she says.
