A prescription for psychosocial cancer care

Abstract

Anxiety, depression, and fatigue are just some of the debilitating conditions that can accompany a diagnosis of cancer or a course of cancer treatment. Lack of transportation to health-care appointments, financial problems, and a lack of health insurance are also factors that can adversely affect a person's ability to recover from the disease. However, all-too-often, these psychosocial factors do not receive the attention from cancer-care providers that they deserve, according to a report by the US Institute of Medicine (IOM) released on Oct 23.To address this gap, the report—Cancer care for the whole patient: meeting psychosocial health needs—presents a new standard of care for patients, which recognises the role of psychological and social factors on people's ability to function, their quality of life, and disease progression. The report found that, largely thanks to the voluntary sector, a wide range of effective psychosocial services are available to patients in the USA. But interventions to identify patients' psychosocial needs and link them to appropriate services were often lacking. The report makes ten recommendations for action including the adoption of the new standard of care by health-care providers, the development of performance measures for psychosocial care, and an education drive to empower patients and their family caregivers to expect, and request, cancer care that meets the standard for psychosocial care.The IOM recommendations provide practical steps towards improving the quality of psychosocial care in the USA. The document deserves to be widely read, not only because it is relevant to the wellbeing of the 10·5 million US people who live with a past or current diagnosis of cancer, but also because it is applicable to other serious illnesses.Psychosocial factors are problems in their own right but they can also have knock-on effects on physical health. Depression, for example, might prevent a patient from complying with their treatment plan. Health-care providers need to realise this link and their responsibility to manage and treat all aspects of their patients' health—physical and psychosocial. Anxiety, depression, and fatigue are just some of the debilitating conditions that can accompany a diagnosis of cancer or a course of cancer treatment. Lack of transportation to health-care appointments, financial problems, and a lack of health insurance are also factors that can adversely affect a person's ability to recover from the disease. However, all-too-often, these psychosocial factors do not receive the attention from cancer-care providers that they deserve, according to a report by the US Institute of Medicine (IOM) released on Oct 23. To address this gap, the report—Cancer care for the whole patient: meeting psychosocial health needs—presents a new standard of care for patients, which recognises the role of psychological and social factors on people's ability to function, their quality of life, and disease progression. The report found that, largely thanks to the voluntary sector, a wide range of effective psychosocial services are available to patients in the USA. But interventions to identify patients' psychosocial needs and link them to appropriate services were often lacking. The report makes ten recommendations for action including the adoption of the new standard of care by health-care providers, the development of performance measures for psychosocial care, and an education drive to empower patients and their family caregivers to expect, and request, cancer care that meets the standard for psychosocial care. The IOM recommendations provide practical steps towards improving the quality of psychosocial care in the USA. The document deserves to be widely read, not only because it is relevant to the wellbeing of the 10·5 million US people who live with a past or current diagnosis of cancer, but also because it is applicable to other serious illnesses. Psychosocial factors are problems in their own right but they can also have knock-on effects on physical health. Depression, for example, might prevent a patient from complying with their treatment plan. Health-care providers need to realise this link and their responsibility to manage and treat all aspects of their patients' health—physical and psychosocial.