Stepped Care - Optimising Psycho-oncological Care Provision by Structured Screening and Diagnosis (STEPPEDCARE)

University of Leipzig

Status: Completed

Conditions: Cancer

Treatments: Other: Stepped Care

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01859429

NKP-332-026

Details and patient eligibility

About

The study will examine whether the provision of psychosocial support services for cancer patients in acute care can be optimized by the use of a structured combination of screening procedures with physician interviews and structured patient pathways.

There is strong evidence that a third of all cancer patients in acute care are suffering from mental health conditions and that a third expresses the need for professional psycho-oncological support.

However, physicians and nurses do not always identify these patients in need for support. Screening questionnaires are significantly better to identify distressed patients however the use of screenings alone does not necessarily improve the patients' emotional well-being.

Purpose of this study is to evaluate a psychosocial stepped care model which aims to decrease the patients' distress.

Enrollment: 1,012 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• patients in acute care for cancer
• written informed consent
• 18 years and older
• ability to complete questionnaires

Exclusion criteria

• insufficient command of German

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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1,012 participants in 2 patient groups

Stepped Care

Experimental group

Description:

Structured stepped requirement of psychosocial support

Treatment:

Other: Stepped Care

Care as usual

No Intervention group

Description:

Unstructured requirement of psychosocial support