By Sarah Green

KHI News Service

Nov. 3, 2008

Tom Allen laughs with co-workers in the soils laboratory at the Kansas Department of Transportation. Allen, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2005, has worked with state agencies to develop a training program that helps employees with cancer keep their jobs. (Dave Ranney/KHI)

TOPEKA Years ago, working was out of the question for someone diagnosed with cancer.

"It used to be highly unusual that people with cancer came back to work," said Patrice O"Hara, the state"s Comprehensive Cancer Program Manager. "The prognosis usually wasn"t very good."

Times have changed, O"Hara said. Earlier detection of the disease and new treatment options help more cancer patients survive the disease.

But employers aren"t always sure how to react to a worker diagnosed with cancer.

"When a patient first starts treatment, many times they are OK," O"Hara said. "They"re fine for a couple of weeks, but then the bottom falls out. Their supervisor thinks "they"ve already started treatment, so they should be OK now.""

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment has developed a program to help employers better understand how cancer patients are affected by the treatment and disease. Supervisors from KDHE and the Kansas Department of Administration are now piloting the program, and the health agency hopes to make it available to other state agencies next year.

The training helps supervisors communicate their needs as well as understand better those of the worker, said Patricia Writt, a human resource professional with the state"s Division of Personnel Services.

"We need to be sensitive to what (the employee"s) medical needs are, and they need to know the needs of the job," Writt said. "We need to be in communication with them, because other people may need to take over some of their work. We need to know their desires on confidentiality, and they need to be prepared if they"re not doing the job, we may have to make some tough decisions together."

Options available to the employees include working flexible schedules and applying for a shared leave program, which grants other workers" unused time off to employees who can prove they need it. A federal medical leave law also allows workers to take off up to 12 weeks and keep their job.

"We talk about all the tools that are available to help the employee keep working and be able to come back," Writt said. "We need to balance the needs of the individual and the organization at the same time."

In the future, O"Hara said, the state would like to make available the training to businesses across the state.

"We"ve seen such interest in it," she said.

New concept

Health officials included in the March 2005 Kansas Comprehensive Cancer Control and Prevention Plan a goal to develop and sponsor a training program for human resource professionals to work with cancer survivors in the workplace.

"It was a discussion point that came up in our talks. For instance, what happens when an employee comes back without hair how do you react?" O"Hara said. "The idea blossomed from there about two or three years ago."

KDHE started working with a program developed for employers who had employees with chronic diseases or who were terminally ill. But that program wasn"t quite right for what was needed, O"Hara said, because it did not focus on patients who planned to return to work.

So the state"s cancer team worked with an oncology nurse, cancer survivors and others to develop its own training session.

It outlines possible side effects caused by cancer treatment and describes the typical timeframe for when patients experience their lowest lows.

It also is designed to help employees understand what they should do to better communicate with their employers.

"They have the responsibility to keep their supervisors informed," O"Hara said.

Unclear expectations

Tom Allen worked for a small non-profit organization in Topeka in 2005 when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer at the age of 34.

He underwent three rounds of chemotherapy over the course of six weeks, each round consuming about 40 hours a week.

"My employer was pretty good they kept me on staff, let me keep my insurance," he said.

But the week before his last treatment, his supervisor sent a letter letting him know that he needed to be back to work in two weeks or he would be fired.

"I went back the next day after my last treatment because I didn"t want to lose my job," he said.

It was hard to work in a small office under those circumstances, he said. With only five employees, the organization needed all of them to be fully productive. Although he did not lose his job, he quit a few months later because of the stress caused by his disease.

He now is a publications writer and works in the soil lab at the Kansas Department of Transportation and has worked with KDHE to develop their employer training program for dealing with cancer survivors.

Anyone who supervises an employee with cancer could benefit from the training, he said, because it would help them better understand what to expect.

"My boss just made the assumption that "he can"t do his job anymore,"" he said. "I don"t think my immune system is what it used to be, but as far as doing my job, retaining the skills I learned in college nothing has changed."

"Never seen anything like this"

O"Hara said the state"s cancer partnership would like the training to help cancer patients keep their jobs during and after they are treated for the disease.

"So many people are identified by their job it"s their livelihood, their paycheck, their health insurance," she said. "To lose your job is, sometimes, to lose all hope."

The state"s human resource professionals and supervisors who have taken part in the project have reported that they have never received this kind of training before. And KDHE hasn"t been able to find other states or businesses with similar programs.

The program is funded entirely by a federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant of $255,000 each year. O"Hara said the training being developed for cancer survivors could easily be modified to train employers for dealing with workers who have any chronic disease; for example, how to handle an employee returning to work after a heart attack.

With its limited resources, she said, KDHE"s plan is to train human resources workers in all of the state"s agencies before offering the program to the private sector.

"We want to raise awareness of the issue," she said. "There are more chronic disease survivors now than ever. We want to help them stay productive and strong."

-Sarah Green is a staff writer for KHI News Service, which specializes in coverage of health issues facing Kansans. She can be reached at sgreen@khi.org or at 785-233-5443, ext. 118.