The countdown is on! The Cancer Rehab Community Conference 2025 (#TCRCC2025) is happening virtually November 7–8, 2025, and you don’t want to miss it.
This annual event is designed specifically for oncology rehab professionals — physical therapists, occupational therapists, and others working in cancer rehabilitation (as well as future professionals/students!). And here’s one of the best parts: TCRCC2025 is approved for both PT and OT CEUs.
That means you’ll walk away not only with new knowledge and strategies, but also with CEU credit you can apply toward your professional requirements.
Why Attend TCRCC2025?
Cancer rehab is an area of enormous need — but opportunities for specialized, practical continuing education are few and far between. TCRCC2025 was created to fill that gap.
Here’s what makes this conference different:
- Completely virtual → no travel costs, no time away from your clinic or family.
- Expert-led sessions → learn from clinicians and researchers working directly in oncology rehab.
- Practical takeaways → strategies you can put into practice with your patients right away.
- Community connection → join hundreds of rehab professionals committed to improving care for people with cancer across the globe.
What You’ll Learn
Without giving too much away (because I’ll be spotlighting our speakers in October podcast episodes 👀), here’s a glimpse of what you can expect:
- Foundations & Evidence → updates on the latest research driving our field forward.
- Real-World Clinical Strategies → case-based sessions and interventions you can use Monday morning with YOUR patients.
- Special Topics → virtual reality, late effects, rare diagnoses, and psychosocial care.
- Professional Growth → building programs, advocating for your patients, and expanding your oncology rehab practice.
Whether you’re brand-new to oncology rehab or a seasoned specialist, you’ll find sessions that challenge and inspire you.
All the deets for #TCRCC2025
- Dates: November 7–8, 2025
- Location: 100% virtual (attend from anywhere!)
- CEU Approval: PT & OT CEUs approved (with more state approvals on the way)
- Save your seat here!
How to Register
Registration is now open! Secure your spot today at TheOncoPT.com/conference.
Don’t wait — this is your chance to invest in your growth, strengthen your practice, and connect with a community that understands the unique challenges of oncology rehab.
See You at TCRCC2025!
We cannot wait to welcome you to The Cancer Rehab Community Conference 2025.
And be sure to subscribe to TheOncoPT Podcast, because throughout October I’ll be sharing conversations with some of our incredible speakers to give you a sneak peek at what’s coming.
✨ Mark your calendar. Register today. And join us for two powerful days of learning, connection, and inspiration at TCRCC2025.
Want to watch the episode instead?
Watch this week’s episode of TheOncoPT Podcast on our YouTube channel!
Transcript
Dr. Elise K. Cantu (00:19)
Hey, Onco PT and welcome back to this episode of the Onco PT podcast. I am thrilled to be talking to you today because it is now officially countdown season until the Cancer Rehab Community Conference 2025. If you’ve missed it, here as a partnership between the brilliant minds, like I am gonna boast a little here, the brilliant minds of myself,
and Dr. Kelly Sturm over at Cancer Rehab PT, we came together a few years ago and said, we need something better for the cancer rehab professionals and aficionados out there who are passionate and driven and determined to elevate the standard of cancer rehab across the globe. And so that’s how the cancer rehab community was founded. And that is how the Cancer Rehab Community Conference came to be because we said we need
something that is specifically for the clinicians who are out in the field in the trenches practicing with these patients day in and day out. We need actionable steps. We need clinical pearls that we can actually take and implement into practice instead of the pie in the sky. While awesome and cool and exciting, the research is really hard sometimes to actually take and then implement into practice.
And so we needed a learning environment in which this was the focus of taking the science of the best possible available evidence and actually translating that into practice. And thus the Cancer Rehab Community Conference was born. So again, that’s kind of the quick recap on the Cancer Rehab Community Conference. This year’s conference, my friend, is going to knock your socks off. First and foremost, it is taking place November 7th and November 8th.
of 2025. is virtual, so you have no travel except to get from your bed to wherever you’re watching the conference the day of. And we are bringing you world-class speakers who are practicing in oncology rehab, who are doing the thing and are seeing the results with your patients. So as part of our celebration and our kickoff of the countdown to this year’s conference,
we’re gonna spend a little time on the podcast talking about the amazing lineup of speakers and their sessions. Like I said, that are going to absolutely just knock your socks off this year. Real quick, I would be kicking myself in the foot ⁓ if I didn’t also mention that the Cancer Rehab Community Conference has been approved for OTCUs and PTCEUs. We have all of that information located at our conference website.
You can find that at the oncopt.com slash conference where you will find all the deets there, all the lineup. I know for a fact for OT, we are approved in all 50 states. That’s through AOTA. For PT, we have submitted approval for all 50 states. We have, I think like 75 % of states we’ve heard back from. just waiting back on a few more at this point. But like I said, by the time this episode goes out, we may have a few more state approval that has come in.
and can find all of that information on our conference website at theoncopt.com slash conference. Now, let’s get into it.
Now, I’m not even gonna try for like a segue. We’re just gonna get into it, okay? So the sessions at the Cancer Rehab Community Conference. So how we do this is we keep our sessions brief and action packed. Yes, we could totally let all of these speakers have two plus hours to talk about their amazing stuff and they would do a great job with it. But one of the things that we find with a lot of conferences, especially virtual experiences, is after a while of sitting there,
you just get a little antsy, you get a little tired, get a little, I wonder what’s scrolling, like what’s on my Instagram feed right now. And so what we do at the Cancer Rehab Community Conference is we keep our sessions deliberately brief. So the conference sessions this year are about 45 minutes each. are also, every single speaker will have opportunity for audience question and answer so that you can engage with the speakers about their content.
to again facilitate the process of learning the stuff and then actually putting it into practice with your own patients when you return to work on Monday morning. So let’s go through the lineup here. First up kicking us off, have Molly Reynolds who is covering immunotherapy and considerations for the oncology rehab. And I can tell you for a fact, I’ve been going through and updating, we did a big overhaul this summer of my signature course oncology specialist bootcamp and the amount
of immunotherapy content that we covered because it’s becoming more and more commonplace in cancer treatments for so many different diagnoses. This is an especially important session and I’m really excited that Molly’s kicking us off. First day, first session of the conference. Next up we have Rowena Tam who is covering pelvic floor dysfunctions and breast cancer survivorship. Now, Rowena has basically developed a super
niche expertise in this area. And while I say super niche as like her understanding of this topic is so deep, but the application that this topic has is so, so important. A lot of us are very familiar with gynecological cancer survivors understandably are going to have pelvic floor dysfunction. And we could also see that with some other diagnoses, right? I’m thinking,
prostate cancer, example, testicular cancer, right? These are very top of mind. But what a lot of us, especially when we’re maybe newer to oncology rehab, when we may not understand is that actually a lot of other diagnoses ⁓ are going to be treated with treatments that affect our pelvic floor and not necessarily just for the short term, but also for the long term. And so I’m really excited that Rowena is really diving into the link between pelvic floor dysfunction
and breast cancer treatments. And then what does this ultimately mean for our patients as we move into this survivorship phase? And again, as more and more people survive cancer for longer and longer, this is only going to continue to grow in importance of how many patients are going to benefit from you having this information and being able to apply it to your own practice. Next up, we have Karen Jarrett. Her session is titled, Utilizing Implementation Strategy to Guide Prospective Cancer Surveillance in a Large Health Care System.
Quick Breath, that is a beefy title. But when I tell you this is a beefy session and not like beefy is a supreme compliment here. One of the things, again, this is what we, you know, this was a big impetus behind the Cancer Rehab Community Conference. We know what prospective surveillance is. It’s been around for almost decades at this point. It’s for sure been around, I think like 12 or 13 years.
maybe even more at this point. This is a well-known topic, well-understood topic within oncology rehabilitation, but the number of institutions, big and small, who are truly implementing this correctly, appropriately, and, here’s the final star on this, and built for their patients in their own communities is very, very little.
Very few organizations have truly implemented prospective surveillance model that is effective in the long term, that is appropriately serving their patient population in the way that they need to be served. There’s a significant gap between the research and actuality. And this is why Karen’s session is so, so important because the prospective surveillance model, again, gold standard. We know this, but how do we actually marry it to the clinical reality of what is happening?
with you and your patients in your practice. Again, whether that’s maybe a small outpatient clinic, maybe that’s a big inpatient cancer hospital and everything in between, right? So this session is going to be very, very important. Again, this is not just for our large healthcare systems. While that is definitely in the title here, Karen is really leveraging her experience of this is what we’ve made work at our system. These are the things that have worked. These are the things that didn’t work.
And here’s how to make it happen within your own session, which is really, really exciting. Next up, and this is kind of our, ⁓ I think the final one of our Friday morning sessions is actually a panel between Scott Capoza, Kristin Madrid, and Natalie Smith called Lean On Me, a case-based approach to multidisciplinary care and cancer survivorship. And I don’t have their titles in front of us. Of course, you know and love Scott Capoza, physical therapist.
but Kristin Madrid and Natalie Smith, believe one of them is a social work. I’m so, so sorry. One might be speech path. I absolutely was not prepared and did not bring my notes for this. Maybe it’s psychosocial. think one of them might be nutritional. That’s what it is. Okay. So PT nutrition and psychosocial are the different domains of this panel discussion. And so again, this is not just
It’s great for us to do multidisciplinary care. We know the research says this is good. Go out and do it. This, my friends, is a presentation panel from experts who are in a multidisciplinary clinic doing this with their patients. And they’re not just talking to us about, we do this thing, it’s really cool. They’re bringing in real life patient cases to illustrate how they’re able to do this, how to implement this into care.
how to improve maybe the multidisciplinary ⁓ collaboration that you may already have in your setting. Maybe you don’t have it. Maybe you’re like me where you kind of practice on your own. How can we then still establish and maintain that multidisciplinary ⁓ collaboration in order to best support our patients? Again, as we really move into this long-term survivorship phase that many more of our patients are going into and transitioning into every single year.
So I’m really, really excited about this panel. It’s going to be so good. This next session, the title absolutely stopped Kelly and I in our tracks when we were reviewing applications way back at the beginning of the year for this conference. Let’s talk about death presented by Adam Matichek. Now, if this title doesn’t intrigue you a little bit, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, friend, because this title is
So amazing. Let me read you the first line. Death, grief, and loss are unavoidable in oncology care.
let’s just get that out. Get it out of the way right now. This is something that if you don’t already expect it to some degree in oncology, I think you will come to expect it. And this isn’t to be doom and gloom, although some days it does feel really good to be in that doom and gloom. This is normalizing the conversations that we have around death and dying.
and grief and loss within oncology as professionals. ⁓ As much as we talk about being able to know this and show up for our patients and know the exact prescription to address cancer related fatigue, et cetera, we also sometimes as caring rehabilitation professionals kind of put our own needs to the side. And yes, there is absolutely a time and a place for that. But there comes a point where
You cannot do that anymore without sacrificing the ability for you to show up fully for your patients and be able to devote the emotional capacity for them to support them through the hardest time in their life. And if you don’t take care of you, you are definitely not gonna be able to take care of your patients. And so I’m really, really excited. Adam is going to talk us through ⁓
you know, identifying skills to help recognize and process grief, both in others, but also in ourselves, as well as how to engage in emotionally intelligent conversations about this, which I think is much easier said than done. But if anybody is going to take us through this very deep, very important conversation, well, it’s definitely going to be Adam. So we are very much looking forward to this. Now pivot here because there’s no smooth way to segue this.
Our next session, this is still on Friday, is Dr. Kelly Martin, whose session is called, Getting Back in the Game, Return to Sport in Cancer Survivorship. yeah. Now, quick pause here. Kelly is actually coming on the podcast a little later ⁓ this fall to talk all about her session. So I’m just gonna leave you with the title and make you wait until that episode to learn more about this session. So stay tuned, definitely encourage you.
This is a session you don’t want to miss, but my lips are sealed. not going to talk about any more of this. I’m going to make you wait until that episode. And speaking of, we actually have two more speakers at the Cancer Rehab Community Conference who are doing these special podcast episode appearances. The next one, Dr. Alexandra Hill talking about tackling social determinants of health and reducing cancer care disparities in oncology rehab. Y’all.
We recorded this episode last week. I think Alex and I could have had this conversation for another three hours because of just how good it was. And unfortunately, how ever increasingly timely this topic is in our world. So you don’t want to miss it. Like I said, we did record a podcast episode all about this. I’m going to make you wait.
until that podcast episode comes out. But no, this is going to be a must attend session at the conference. We cannot wait for it. All right. Next up we have Samantha Marriott on management of patient with spinal compression fractures. This might be one of the scariest areas for new therapists to practice in.
Once I feel like people get past the initial oncology, ooh, gosh, cancer scariness, they then get tripped up by the next roadblock, which is often bone metastases and bone fractures. And so this session by Samantha is really going to talk us through what are the clinical reasoning skills and the fundamental knowledge you need to work with these patients safely, but also effectively, right? Because we want to be safe, of course, but also how can we make sure
and address the impairments that they’re dealing with. How can we still challenge them appropriately to not get ourselves into a situation of deconditioning, for example, right? Like we still have to work with this patient population. How can we appropriately, safely, effectively challenge them? So Samantha’s going to go over the spinal instability neoplastic score, the S-I-N-S, if you haven’t heard of that. Also talking about red flags, because I know there might be someone in the audience right now who’s saying,
this topic still makes me super nervous. I always hate it when I have a patient who has this happening, because I’m just so afraid of it. Don’t worry, friend. Samantha is going to talk you through the different medical treatment options that these patients may ⁓ encounter or be treated with as part of managing their spinal compression fractures. And then also through real life patient case scenarios, what do we do with them? Nothing beats learning.
quite like being able to apply it to real life patient cases with someone who does this day in and day out. And so we are very, very excited for this session. We’re excited for all of them, if you couldn’t tell already, ⁓ but another good session. Now, this next session made Kelly and I really put on our research hats for a hot minute, and I’m so glad that we did. So Barbara Kutch is presenting on…
a return to independent ambulation after a diagnosis of neurolymphomatosis. When we got this application in, I had to Google what neurolymphomatosis is. I did not know what this is, but I think this is a really important experience within oncology rehab because at some point, if you haven’t already, it’s coming my friend, you are going to encounter a case that is so wild.
that is so out there or seemingly crazy, may not actually be that crazy, but is so different and unique compared to what you’ve experienced previously, what you’ve experienced before up to this point in your career. And you can either…
panic and say, my God, I don’t know what this is. I don’t know how to treat this. And then try to pass the patient off on somebody else because you’re afraid, because you don’t know. Or you can step up to the challenge and you can say, I may not know everything I need to know right now, but I’m going to get in there. I’m going to learn what I can about this person, see what they’re dealing with. We’re going to get started. And then you can go later.
and do some more research to say, okay, here’s what I need to do next. So while you may not have treated a person with neurolymphomatosis, neurolymphomatosis, my gosh, I needed practice saying that before the conference for real. While you may have not encountered a person diagnosed with neurolymphomatosis yet, you could.
You may not, but this session is going to give you a framework by which you can take and implement into your own practice for the next patient case that maybe stumps you or you don’t have any experience with, or I don’t even know what the heck this is. I need to go and Google it, which is exactly what I did, right? So quick little recap on Barbara’s ⁓ session here. So again, case-based, this is taking us through an actual patient case.
and what Barbara did to help with this patient. So looking at neurolymphomatosis, what are some differential diagnoses that may present similarly that we need to piece out when working with this patient population? We’ll talk about specifically what Barbara did in her evaluation, what were the examination components she incorporated in order to come up with the most appropriate.
plan of care that ultimately helped this person return to independent ambulation. How exciting. So very much very excited about this. Very, very cool patient population. And again, maybe just because you haven’t seen it yet doesn’t mean you won’t see it in the future. And I bet there’s going to be a ton of stuff that Barbara talks about that is directly going to be able to inform your ability to intervene with more unique cases in your own practice in the future.
Now our last session, oh, sorry, second to last session at the Cancer Rehab Community Conference 2025 is by Alex Eilers called Navigating Uncertainty in Oncology Rehabilitation. Communication strategies to elevate your practice, get this, when I don’t know is the answer.
What a rad title. Now, Alex is going to come on the podcast later this fall to talk about this session. We recorded it. It is ready to go. It is a really, really juicy episode and I can’t wait to share it with you. So I’m going to make you wait, but know that this is another really exciting session. Now our official last session of the Cancer Rehab Community Conference 2025 is called Beyond Movement, Using Virtual Reality as a Skilled PT and OT Intervention.
in oncology rehabilitation by Stephanie McGee and Mary Hunter. And boy, boy, am I pumped about this session. Now, Stephanie and Mary actually introduced me to virtual reality at the end of last year. And since then, I’ve been slowly incorporating it into my own practice. And I will be completely upfront with y’all. I was a skeptic. It felt like another…
another toy, just another modality that, you know, it’s just, I feel like you go to these different conferences or you read about it in different, you know, publications of like, wow, this new cool tool is totally going to change physical therapy. And then it just kind of Peters out and was like, well, that was. Underwhelming at best. That’s how I felt about virtual reality at first and through.
the exposure that Stephanie and Mary have facilitated for me and seeing it in my own practice. And now actually using VR with my own patients in oncology rehab, I get it now. I understand it and the differences I have seen in the patients I have used VR with has been crazy. Like crazy, really, really good.
I’m gonna let them tell you all about virtual reality, but know that this is a tool that, yes, it’s definitely here at Oncology Rehab. It’s been in, know, like I can say, at least for physical therapy, it’s been around for a while, but this is really where the science meets the excitement behind virtual reality. This is where we’re really seeing, okay, virtual reality, yeah, cool, exciting, technology, et cetera.
How do we put that into practice with actual oncology patients? How can we use this to very specifically target the impairments that our patients are experiencing?
And then what do we do about it? Right? How do we actually use the VR to address these things? And that’s what Stephanie and Mary are going to cover in their session. Very, very excited about it. Again, if you can’t tell, I’m really excited about all of these sessions at the cancer rehab community conference. They’re all very unique, very practical, very applicable, very timely topics. ⁓ frankly, I have to brag on our speakers. They did an excellent job. Like
Their applications wowed us. And so when we got them, we were like, of course you have to present, like, please come on down. So very, very excited to share this with y’all. There is a lot of really, really cool stuff that is going to be talked about at the conference. You are going to walk away with so much useful, frankly, information that you can then immediately apply into your own practice. That’s the whole reason we do this conference, right? Most conferences,
They have amazing researchers who come in and they talk about this is the latest and greatest, and that is so cool. That is so exciting. But we also know that on average it takes 17 years from when something is published for it to actually get into everyday clinical practice. That’s not good enough. Our patients don’t have the time for this. And this is exactly why we put on the Cancer Rehab Community Conference to shorten that time.
to take the research, actually have people who are putting it into practice, and then break it down so that you can do the same thing in your own practice with your own patients in your own community. So lots of exciting things happen. We cannot wait to share this with you. Again, the Cancer Rehab Community Conference is happening this November 7th and 8th, 2025. It is a virtual only conference happening on our, Cancer Rehab Community Platform. We are so, so excited for it.
Again, it is virtual, so that means there is no travel required except for from your bed to the couch or to your chair, wherever you are going to be watching this amazing conference. We have CEUs for both physical therapists and occupational therapists, and of course, PTA and COTAs. ⁓ And if you’re in a different profession, you may be able to take those and then submit to your governing body. I’m less familiar with those, but for sure, for sure, P-T-O-T.
Girl, we got you covered and we cannot wait to see you there. You can save your seat now at TheOncoPT.com/conference And I would encourage you to do that today because Monday, August 25th is the last day of early bird registration. And after that, prices are going to go up. So if you want to save your ticket for this amazing virtual event happening November 7th and 8th,
get CEUs for it and save a little money on the front end, then you definitely want to buy your ticket now. Again, you can save your seat at TheOncoPT.com/conference We have both professional tickets. Those have the CEUs associated with them. We also have student tickets. If you know a student, you know, rehab professional, future rehab professional out there who would benefit from this information, who is excited about this patient population, they would absolutely benefit from coming.
So make sure to pass that information onto them as well. And don’t forget to save your seat at the Cancer Rehab Community Conference 2025, once again, at TheOncoPT.com/conference And we cannot wait to see you there. We have been planning, we have been plotting behind the scenes for literal months now. And it is now time to start the countdown because it is going to be here before we know it. And we cannot wait to see you there. I’m so, so excited to see you at the Cancer Rehab Community Conference.
along with all of our amazing speakers. Kelly and I are so thrilled to be bringing you an amazing conference experience yet again, and we will see you there. Save your seat today at TheOncoPT.com/conference And until next time, this is Elise with the OncoPT. And remember, you are exactly the physical therapist that your patients with cancer need. So let’s get to work.