Course summary

Become qualified to offer massage for cancer patients in your salon, spa, clinic or rooms. This qualification is delivered online and can be completed at your convenience, to suit your schedule.

Jennifer Young’s postgraduate diploma in oncology massage is a certified qualification designed to give spa therapists, beauty practitioners and healthcare workers the understanding, knowledge and confidence to provide massage treatments to clients going through the different stages of cancer, without requiring medical consent.

Massage can be one of the most profoundly healing and restorative treatments a person can experience at any time. However, we know through evidence-based research, that when someone is going through cancer treatment, living with cancer or recovering from it, that massage can have a powerful physical and emotional impact. Benefits can range from short-term improvements such as reduced anxiety, reduced pain and reduced nausea to long-term benefits such as reduced depression and increased dopamine levels.

This course at the Jennifer Young Training School is a combination of online learning and the supported completion of case studies. Through it, you will learn about the biology of cancer, the science of its treatments, the biological drivers of resulting side-effects, and the protocols that you can use to deliver safe therapies, empowering you to treat clients appropriately and with confidence.

Evidence for the benefits of oncology touch therapy treatments

Short-term benefits

• Reduced anxiety, depressed mood and anger in breast cancer patients
• Increased vigour (breast cancer patients)
• Reduced mood disturbances and perceived stress levels
• Improved sleep quality
• Improved quality of life (breast cancer patients)
• Reduced pain and improvement of mood, reduced stress levels
• Reduced perception of pain, nausea and increased relaxation after 10 minute (5 minute per foot) foot massage
• Pain intensity, pulse rate, and respiratory rate significantly reduced immediately after the massages. At study entry, the massage group reported higher pain intensity, which decreased by 42% (25% reduction in the control group)
• Reduced anxiety scores, depression, general fatigue, reduced motivation fatigue, and emotional fatigue
• Reduced depression and improved sleep
• Reduced heart rate and lower blood pressure
• Decrease in physical discomfort, group fatigue, and mood disturbance.
  The effect of massage on mood disturbances was greater when treated continuously by the same therapist

Long-term benefits 

• Reduced depression and hostility, increased urinary dopamine, serotonin values, natural killer cell number and lymphocytes in breast cancer patients
• Reduced mood disturbances and perceived stress levels (breast cancer patients)

Full references are provided as standard in Jennifer Young Training materials.