Early Needs Assessment in Patients With Non-Specific Symptoms of Cancer: An Explorative Study.
Helene Nørgaard Kristensen, Rikke Aarhus, Jannie Rhod Bloch-Nielsen and 2 others
PMID 41317102WHAT IT FOUND
Patients and therapists found early needs assessment after cancer diagnosis helpful for planning daily life support.
Therapists contacting patients directly by phone increased assessments from 11 to 28. The paper describes experiences, not treatment effectiveness.
Key findings
01A reorganisation where therapists contacted patients directly by phone instead of face-to-face via a coordinator increased completed needs assessments from 11 in nine months to 28 in three months.
02Patients and health professionals described early needs assessment as meaningful because it provided coherence in the cancer trajectory and addressed daily life needs rather than only body functions.
03Therapists found the needs assessment form difficult for patients to complete alone but useful as a guide for conversation to ensure all needs were expressed.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
Only five patients and five health professionals were interviewed, so data saturation cannot be assured. The study was conducted in a single Danish clinic with a specific healthcare structure, limiting generalisability. The needs assessment form used was unvalidated. Patient interviews occurred 8 to 10 weeks after the assessment, which may introduce recall bias. Patients with no identified needs were not interviewed. The increase in completed assessments was due to two simultaneous changes (telephone delivery and direct therapist contact), so the effect of either alone is unknown.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest and state they have nothing to report regarding funding.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the increase in completed assessments as evidence that telephone delivery or direct therapist contact is superior to other methods. The study changed two factors at once, and the authors state they do not know which one caused the increase. Also, this is a qualitative description of experiences, not a trial showing that early needs assessment improves patient outcomes.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →