Learn more about Treatment Summaries
Do I need a treatment summary to create a Care Plan?
No! To create a care plan, you will need to know:
- Type of cancer
- If you received radiation therapy, what type of cancer was this done for?
- If you received chemotherapy, what medications were received?
- If you underwent surgery, what procedures were done?
A treatment summary is an important addition to your personal health records, but is not necessary to create a care plan.
What is a Treatment Summary?
A treatment summary is simply a document that details the cancer treatments you received. This should include any surgery, chemotherapy (or other medical therapy) and radiation therapy. The summary should list the diagnosis, stage (using TNM system when possible) and any relevant information from your pathology report. For example, the pathology information may include the number of positive lymph nodes, estrogen receptor status or the tumor cell type. It does not need to be anything fancy, it just needs to contain the important information.
Why do I need a treatment summary?
It is important to have your oncology team document your treatments during or soon after completing them. Should you need to know what therapy you received several years down the road, this information, contained in your medical records, may have been put into storage or destroyed. Many long-term survivors have found this information difficult, if not impossible, to track down. To avoid this, start a treatment summary document during treatments or soon after.
Create your own or print a blank form . This is just a sample, include any events related to your diagnosis- there is no wrong information to include!
