Against the background of a common criticism of the rehabilitation system, the situation of rehabilitation research and practice in oncology is reviewed. A lack of efforts aimed at vocational rehabilitation as well as the main emphasis in inpatient services is criticized. Till now, outpatient services as well as psychosocial rehabilitation care are not as well established, as they should be with regard to provide assistance in coping with the disease and in adapting to the various disabilities may be followed by cancer. As rehabilitation research in oncology is still at its very beginning, we know little about the acceptance of rehabilitation measures as well as the rehabilitation process in its correlation between outcome criteria. Our own pilot study provides first results concerning vocational rehabilitation and acceptance of medical rehabilitation services. As conclusion, we need more elaborated research in oncological rehabilitation for optimizing and further developing rehabilitation care system especially with respect to outpatient and psychosocial services.
Ambulatory Care Germany, West