Oncology Times, July 30, 2007 The first crop of free, publicly available treatment summaries and care plans for survivors of cancer have been published in print and on the Internet, providing health care professionals and patients with a choice of templates to use as needed. This is a cultural shift, if you will, primarily targeted at the medical oncologist or hematologist-oncologist,  said Patricia Ganz, MD, Director of the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control Research at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. The Cancer Survivor's Prescription for Living, which is geared towards nurses, is a two-page form that was printed in the American Journal of Nursing (2007;107:58-70). It provides space to detail the history of cancer treatment, as well as significant events that occurred during treatment and other active health problems. On the second page is the follow-up plan, which includes cancer evaluation, symptoms to report, and a plan to address persistent physical and psychosocial effects. The idea to develop the plan evolved during two meetings convened by the American Journal of Nursing (which is published by the same company as OT, Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins) over the past couple of years, the first in collaboration with the American Cancer Society, the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship, and the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing and the second with ACS, the Oncology Nursing Society, and NCCS. The important piece was that it wasn't just the oncology community, said Pamela J. Haylock, MA, RN, lead author on the Prescription for Living tool and an oncology consultant and doctoral student at the University of Texas Medical Branch School of Nursing, referring to the participants in the second meeting. After treatment a lot of cancer survivors end up going back to general practitioners or internists, sometimes nurse practitioners, and those kinds of settings for their follow-up care rather than staying with an oncology specialist provider. We think it's absolutely critical that people outside of the oncology community are aware of the needs of survivors and resources and the expectations of survivors.