160 Background: Caregivers are instrumental to the health and well-being of gynecologic cancer patients and can be deeply affected by the demands of caregiving. Our aims were to increase awareness of the unmet needs of family caregivers of women with gynecologic cancers and provide recommendations for essential elements of support needed by caregivers to ensure that family caregivers are recognized and supported as key members of the patients’ care teams. Methods: Over the course of a year, a 16-person steering committee and 40 stakeholders, including caregivers, patients, and clinicians, participated in a modified Delphi approach to assemble, review and prioritize a set of essential elements for caregiver support. The process culminated in a multi-disciplinary research roundtable. Stakeholders prioritized caregiver needs and discussed, brainstormed and prioritized essential support services necessary to meet those needs, using three rounds of consensus-building activities. Basic descriptive statistics were performed to feed means and rankings back to stakeholders prior to each round. Results: Stakeholders prioritized the top three needs of caregivers as: 1) to obtain information about their loved one’s cancer (M = 4.18, SD = 4.33), 2) how to provide support and comfort to their loved one (M = 3.18, SD = 3.92) and 3) how to maintain their own emotional health and well-being (M = 2.94, SD = 3.90). Fifteen Essential Elements of Support to address the needs of caregivers of women with gynecologic cancers were identified. These ranged from supports that are immediately actionable (e.g., information for the caregiver on managing the patient’s symptoms, skilled-care training, a point-person to help navigate the system) to more aspirational supports (e.g., integrative services focused on the health and well-being of the caregiver). Conclusions: Caregivers are an integral part of cancer care, though their needs are inconsistently addressed by the care team. In order to provide comprehensive quality care, clinicians and healthcare systems should strive to provide caregivers with the Essential Elements of Support identified in this study and continue to build a healthcare system incorporating caregivers’ needs.
Corrigendum to “Reproductive and hormonal considerations in women at increased risk for hereditary gynecologic cancers: Society of Gynecologic Oncology and American Society for reproductive medicine evidence-based review” [Gynecol. Oncol. 155 (2019) 508–514]