Changes in Distress Screening and Information Reception Among Cancer Patients Following a Training for Oncology Nursing Staff: A Pilot Study.

BACKGROUND

At least half of all cancer patients suffer from significant psychological distress, yet despite well-validated screening procedures, distress often goes unrecognized or untreated. For this reason, a special training (OptiScreen-Training) on this topic has been developed for oncology nurses and carried out on three visceral oncology wards.

AIMS: Investigate whether this training influences patients' psychological symptoms, experience of distress screening, informedness, receipt of recommendation, and utilization of support.

METHODS

To evaluate implementation, a prospective, non-randomized pre-post pilot study was conducted with two independent patient samples. N = 112 patients of the control group (CG, "care-as-usual") completed questionnaires before the OptiScreen-Training and N = 210 different patients of the intervention group (IG) after the training. All patients had a gastrointestinal cancer diagnosis; the majority of both samples received surgery (58.1%-79.5%) as curative treatment (61.9%-77.7%) for colon cancer (33.3%-35.7%); were male (61%-63%); and mean age was 62 years (range 21-91; SD = 11.80-13.06).

RESULTS

There was no significant difference between the CG and IG in terms of psychological distress, resources, or needs (p = 0.274-0.975), nor in the receipt of recommendations (p = 0.748) or the use of psycho-oncological support (p = 0.648). In the IG, more patients indicated that they had completed a screening questionnaire (63.0% vs. 43.3%, p = 0.001) and received psycho-oncology information material (68.3% vs. 46.2%; p < 0.001).

CONCLUSION

Following the OptiScreen-Training more patients reported they had been screened and informed, suggesting nursing staff are applying it in practice. However, it did not affect support use or distress levels, highlighting that screening alone isn't enough to improve psycho-oncological care.