When you are diagnosed with cancer, your medical team plays a vital role in treating the disease itself. This team is focused on diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring your cancer.
Your medical team may include:
- an oncologist: they guide your treatment plan, explain your options, and monitor how treatment is working
- your GP: they help coordinate care, manage your general health, and keep an eye on the whole picture – not just the cancer
- a Nurse Coordinator or Clinical Nurse Specialist: they are often a steady point of contact, helping to explain information in plain language, answer questions, and guide you through the health system.
This medical care is essential – but cancer affects much more than the body alone.
Why supportive care matters
A cancer diagnosis can touch every part of your life: how you feel physically, how you cope emotionally, how your family functions, how you work, rest, eat, sleep, and make sense of what’s happening. This is where supportive care comes in.
Supportive care recognises that you are a whole person, not just a diagnosis. It focuses on supporting your physical comfort, emotional wellbeing, practical needs, and sense of meaning – alongside your medical treatment.
You have a right to access supportive care at any stage of your cancer journey, from diagnosis onwards.
What is supportive care?
Supportive care includes the information, services, and resources you may need to help you live as well as possible with cancer. What supportive care looks like is different for everyone, because everyone’s needs are different – and those needs can change over time.
Supportive care may help with:
- physical needs: managing pain, fatigue, treatment side effects, sleep issues, changes in appearance, sexual concerns, and other symptoms.
- information needs: understanding your diagnosis, treatment options, and what to expect next.
- practical needs: support with transport, meals, childcare, work issues, finances, and paperwork.
- emotional and psychological needs: counselling, mental health support, peer support groups, and care for family members.
- spiritual needs: support that helps you find meaning, hope, connection, or comfort in ways that are meaningful to you.
Supportive care works alongside medical treatment to improve comfort, wellbeing, and quality of life.
Your supportive care team
Supportive care is provided by a wide range of health professionals and community organisations. Examples include:
- specialist cancer nurses and social workers: for emotional support, practical problem-solving, and navigating services
- dietitians experienced in oncology: to help with food that feels gentle, nourishing, and manageable during treatment
- psychologists and counsellors: someone to sit with the emotional weight of what you’re going through
- physiotherapists and exercise physiologists: to support safe movement, strength, and recovery
- palliative care teams: focused on comfort, symptom relief, and quality of life at any stage of illness
- complementary therapies: such as meditation, massage, acupuncture, or creative therapies, to support relaxation and wellbeing when used safely alongside medical care.
You don’t need to access everything. You can choose the supports that feel right for you.
Where to start
You don’t have to work this out on your own – your cancer treatment team can help guide you to the services that may support you along the way, which may change over time. There are also trusted websites and phone services that can help connect you with supportive care when you need it.
- WeCan is an Australian website that brings together supportive care services, resources, and information. It also offers a supportive care needs screening tool, which can gently help you identify areas where a little extra support may be helpful.
- An RCA Specialist Cancer Navigator will do whatever it takes to help you find the support you need.
