Psychiatric morbidity and its recognition by doctors in patients with cancer
By L. Fallowfield, D. Ratcliffe, Va Jenkins, Jacqueline Saul. British Journal of Cancer, 2001
739 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Psychiatric morbidity in patients with cancer is high and without appropriate treatment unremitting. We assessed the ability of 143 doctors to establish the psychological status of 2297 patients during outpatient consultations in 34 cancer centres and hospitals in the UK. Prior to seeing the doctor, consenting patients completed a short self-report questionnaire (GHQ12), designed for the psychological screening of large populations. At the end of the consultation, doctors completed visual analogue scales rating patients’ distress. 837/2297 (36.4%) patients had GHQ scores suggestive of psychiatric morbidity. The doctors’ sensitivity (true positive rate) was 28.87% (SD 25.29), specificity (true negative rate) 84.79% (SD 17.44). The misclassification rate was 34.7% (SD 13.79) meaning that for 797 patients the wrong assessment was probably made. These data show that much of the probable psychiatric morbidity experienced by patients with cancer goes unrecognized and therefore untreated. Doctors need communication skills training to elicit problems during consultations. Appropriate referrals to psychological services are necessary when patients requiring help are identified and ought to be an integral part of cancer care. © 2001 Cancer Research Campaign
Subfields: General Health Professions, Oncology, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
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In Oncology
Citations in the corpus
- Measuring quality of life in routine oncology practice improves communication and patient well-being: a randomized controlled trial. (2004, background): “Physicians vary in their ability to elicit psychosocial information [8,9].”
- Association of perceived physician communication style with patient satisfaction, distress, cancer-related self-efficacy, and perceived control over the disease (2003, background): “Although recognition of psychological distress is a crucial aspect of patient care, oncologists often fail to detect general distress in patients (Ford et al, 1994; Cull et al, 1995; Fallowfield et al, 2001) and ask few questions regarding patients’ psychological health (Ford et al, 1996).”