gms | German Medical Science

Psychosocial aspects of care have already been integrated into the treatment of cancer patients in many centres worldwide and thus are taken for granted in daily routine. Regrettably, interventions are often carried out without prior systematic psycho-oncological diagnostics. Therefore our project intended to implement a psycho-oncological screening for medical doctors in the clinical routine, to detect patients with a high amount of psychosocial stress at an early point of time in treatment. In our project patients filled in a selection of self-assessment questionnaires (EORTC QLQ-C30, HADS, FPZ) at the time of admission and after discharge from hospital. With a short questionnaire (Psychoonkologische Kurzeinschätzung, PO-K) the doctors assessed a distress risk profile for each patient newly admitted to the cancer centre. The instrument contains physical, emotional, social and familial aspects of distress. If necessary a psycho-oncologist was summoned for a detailed diagnostic and, when required, for further psycho-oncological support. At the University Hospital rechts der Isar, Munich, all patients with a visceral tumor are discussed in a daily interdisciplinary conference, so called "tumorboard", to develop an individual treatment plan. The risk profile generated with the PO-K was part of the information and findings which were presented in the tumorboard for each patient and was considered in the individual treatment planning. Additionally, psycho-oncologists of the study group participated in the daily tumorboard to follow treatment decisions and answer questions about the psychosocial condition of study patients. Patients self-assessment was correlated with the doctors distress profile as well as with the psycho-oncologists expertise, to see if medical doctors were able to detect psychosocial risk factors. Experiences about the implementation of the screening in the context of the interdisciplinary tumorboard will be reported and data about the accordance of patients self report, medical doctor screening and psycho-oncological diagnostics of 269 patients will be presented. *The project is funded by the Deutsche Krebshilfe eV.