When Bianca Senf has to explain how she found psycho-oncology, she remembers the five-year-old leukemia patient Rashida, who she looked after as a nurse in a children's ward in the 1980s.

"Back then, adults, but especially children, were left in the dark or lied to about the severity of their illness," says Senf.

"Rashida made many insinuations about her fear of dying, but according to the attending physician, we were not allowed to bring up the subject of death, and so the little one, like many other children, was left alone with her fear.

That depressed me a lot.”

An experience that made the young nurse decide to study medicine.

After studying psychology and sociology in Bielefeld and many years of work as a psycho-oncologist in the cancer society and in hospitals, Bianca Senf actually did her doctorate in medicine - in her early 50s.

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She wrote her doctoral thesis on the psychosocial burden of cancer patients in acute inpatient treatment.

The 62-year-old woman has done pioneering work in psycho-oncology, the psychological care of cancer patients and their families.

She not only set up a counseling center for the German Cancer Society in the Main-Kinzig district, but also the psycho-oncological department, first at the Markus Hospital and later at the University Hospital in Frankfurt.

Hoping for academic recognition

Since the last winter semester, the psychologist and psychotherapist has once again paved the way - as the first professor of psycho-oncology in Germany.

The Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences has appointed Bianca Senf to the new chair, which will initially be financed for five years by the Carls Foundation in Königstein.

The unusual thing about it: In other universities, the subject is usually affiliated with psychosomatics.

"But that is something completely different than an independent professorship that teaches psycho-oncology," explains Senf.

This will give her specialist area the academic recognition she had hoped for.

The importance of psycho-oncology is undisputed, "but it is still not found in all care structures in the standard financing of health insurance companies," regrets the professor.

For Senf, the psychological care of people who have to cope with the diagnosis of cancer is just as important a part of the treatment as medical help.

"Cancer is a potentially life-threatening disease that requires significant emotional management and family support." it means getting sick like that”.

Body and mind formed a unit.

In psycho-oncology, the professor sees a kind of first aid for the soul, which can contribute to recovery just like medical therapies.

An approach that she has been teaching her students in Darmstadt since the winter semester.

Setting up the endowed professorship was not easy.

The Carls Foundation had asked several colleges and universities.

Many were immediately interested, but creating a new professorship and the associated structures is a long process.

Most universities are large structures and have a harder time than the small Protestant University in Darmstadt with its around 1,700 students in nursing, health and social courses.

"The EHD was probably open from the beginning, supported the project very much and put their foot on the gas," says Senf.

"A completely new facet"

President Willehad Lanwer explains this with the orientation of the Evangelical University: "Turning towards others is one of the central values ​​that we convey to our students." For the chairwoman of the Carls Foundation, Ulrike Soeffing, psycho-oncological counseling is "an important pillar of modern cancer therapy “.

Such projects have been funded for years.

"With the endowed professorship, we want to make this consulting knowledge accessible to students in nursing and health courses and promote academic development." According to Dean Gunnar Nielsen, the chair enables "a completely new facet in our curricula".

From April onwards, Senf will be giving lectures on psycho-oncology in the Nursing and Health Promotion course, which will also be open to students in other subjects such as social work and counseling.

In the future, there are also plans to set up a psycho-oncological counseling center so that students can immediately put what they have learned into practice.

The new teaching and research offer is apparently well received.

There is also great interest in lectures outside of the university and she has already had several inquiries about supervising bachelor's and master's theses, says Senf.

She sees this as the first successes of the new professorship.