Supportive care needs in Hong Kong Chinese women confronting advanced breast cancer

Abstract

Background Women with advanced breast cancer (ABC) are living longer, so understanding their needs becomes important. This cross‐sectional study investigated the type and extent of unmet supportive care needs in Hong Kong Chinese women with advanced breast cancer. Methods Face‐to‐face interviews were conducted among women with stage III or stage IV disease mostly awaiting chemotherapy (76%) to identify unmet needs using the Supportive Care Needs Survey Short Form, psychological morbidity using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, symptom distress using the Memorial Symptom Assessment Scale, and satisfaction with care using the Patient satisfaction questionnaire (PSQ‐9). Results About 27–72% of 198/220 (90%) women (mean age = 53.4 ± 9.74 (standard deviation) years) identified needs from the health system, information, and patient support (HSIPS) domain as the top 15 most prevalent unmet needs. ‘having one member of hospital staff with whom you can talk to about all aspect of your condition, treatment, and follow‐up’ was most cited by 72% of the patients, with remaining unmet needs addressing mostly desire for information. Unmet need strength did not differ between women with stage III and stage IV disease, whereas women with first time diagnosis reported greater health system and information unmet needs compared with women with recurrent disease. Stepwise multiple regression analyses revealed that symptom distress was consistently positively associated with all but sexuality need domains, whereas low satisfaction with care was associated with HSIPS (β = 3.270, p < 0.001) and physical and daily living (β = 2.810, p < 0.01) domains. Discussions Chinese women with ABC expressed need for continuity of care and improved information provision. High symptom distress was associated with lower levels of satisfaction with care. These unmet needs appear to reflect current care services shortcomings. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Perioperative Comprehensive Supportive Care Interventions for Chinese Patients with Esophageal Carcinoma: a Prospective Study

“…The small sample size, single inventory of psychological measurement and the absence of measurement in other aspects, such as quality of life, might also cause bias in evaluation of living condition and limit the value of our study, indicating that further trials with larger samples and variable measurements are in need to confirm the present findings. Moreover, based on the report that Chinese women with advanced breast cancer expressed desire for continuity of care and improved information provision (Au et al, 2013), for postoperative patients with esophageal carcinoma who have to undergo physical rehabilitation of long duration, a long-term supportive care programme should be developed in the near future.…”

Un-met Supportive Care Needs of Iranian Breast Cancer Patients

“…Investigations of supportive care needs among South East Asian breast cancer patients suggests that a large percentage have unmet needs Liao et al, 2012;Au et al, 2013;Li et al, 2013;Nakaguchi et al, 2013). Previous Iranian researchers have documented high rates of disrupted psychological functioning among breast cancer patients (Montazeri et al, 2002;Tavoli et al, 2008), and a lack of disease and treatment related information or education (Montazeri et al, 2002), but evidence of unmet supportive care needs is lacking.…”

Unmet care needs in people living with advanced cancer: a systematic review

“…Information about things you can do to help yourself get well (41%) Au [21] Worry that the results of treatment are beyond your control (18%) Lack of energy/tiredness (11%) Not being able to do the things you used to do (14%)…”

“…The SCNS was the most commonly applied assessment -used in six studies [8, 20-22, 26, 37] -but even studies applying the SCNS used different variants of the tool (e.g., 34-item [22] versus 61-item [26] versions); classified needs in different ways (e.g., coding of some items as 'spiritual' [26] versus 'psychological' [21]); and applied different thresholds for identifying a need as 'unmet' (e.g., whether 'low' levels of need were considered to be unmet needs [37] or not [8]). As discussed above, measurement approaches and assumptions construct and constrain the needs that can be identified: this is most obviously the case in studies that purposively focussed on a single domain of need but even 'comprehensive' assessments like the SCNS arguably neglect some aspects of wellbeing (e.g., spiritual, cultural, and occupational needs).…”