13^th Asia-Pacific Oncologists Annual Meeting

Biography

Biography: Sumitha Subramaniam

Abstract

Supportive care includes those activities that ease the symptoms or the side effects of treatment. Research show that cancer patients are satisfied with clinical aspects of their care but they are dissatisfied with the information received about the disease, treatment and their side. The objective was to assess the supportive care needs of cancer patients under the following heads: Psychological; health system and information; physical and daily living and; patient care and support. A questionnaire based cross-sectional study (sample size=154) was done. Study tool used was supportive care needs survey short form-31 (SCNS-SF31) in the preferred language. Study population was cancer patients, above 18 years of age, diagnosed at least three months prior to the study. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS version 12 and mean scores along with standard deviations were expressed for each domain. Student independent test was used to know the observed difference between means across groups was statistically significant (‘p’<0.05). Out of 154 cancer patients, majority were females (88). Psychological needs of majority of cancer patients were met. There were unmet physical and daily living needs like handling the pain and tiredness with females having higher needs than males. Patients were found to have unmet needs in patient care and support domain, felt that the hospital staff were not empathetic (63.6%), and did not reassure that the way they feel is normal. Patients had unmet needs in getting information regarding tests (48.1%), benefits and side effects of treatment (49.4%), things to do to help themselves to get well (66.2%). This study will help doctors and hospital staff to address the felt needs of the cancer patients. Assessing the supportive care needs helps the caregivers to plan their supportive care according to the patient’s needs.