Holistic care needs in an inpatient oncology unit: patients versus professionals

Macmillan Cancer Support advocates that a Holistic Needs Assessment (HNA) is carried out at diagnosis and re-evaluated at significant key milestones throughout the patient journey. This now includes acute admission. However, evidence describing the use of HNAs and prevalence of unmet holistic needs in the acute oncology setting is lacking. This project aims to identify the prevalence of unmet holistic needs of patients in an acute oncology setting, and discern the differences in perception of needs between patients and healthcare professionals (HCPs).

Patient and HCP surveys were conducted at 2 time points over a 10-month period. Surveys were co-designed with patient representatives based on the Macmillan Cancer Support 'concerns checklist' and used a 5-point Likert scale, rating the importance of each domain to the patient and HCP and the degree to which they felt the clinical team were aware of their needs.

In areas where there was good concordance between patient and HCPs ratings of prevalence, patients still perceived that HCPs were mostly unaware of these needs. Furthermore, HCPs overvalued the importance of advanced care planning and cardiopulmonary resuscitation discussions for patients.

There are discrepancies between patient and HCP perceptions of unmet holistic needs in the acute oncology setting.