Time to act: the challenges of working during and after cancer, initiatives in research and practice.

A diagnosis of cancer has a significant impact on work and employment. With improvements in cancer treatments more people are surviving longer, and it is estimated that there are approximately 700,000 people of working age with cancer in the UK (Maddams et al., 2009). This figure is increasing year on year (Maher and McConnell, 2009), not least because people are working later in life. While many people are able to remain in or return to work, a sizeable number experience problems: research shows that people with cancer are 1.37 times more likely to be unemployed than those without (de Boer et al., 2009). Patients experience a lack of well-timed and appropriate support, both in the acute phase and in the months and years following treatment. Health care professionals, in turn, report that they feel ill-equipped to respond adequately to patients’ work-related difficulties (Amir et al., 2009).