One Third of All Cancer Survivors Fail to Have any Conversations with their Healthcare Providers about their Psychosocial Issues

Not terribly surprising, but recent research shows that less than one-third of all cancer survivors of adult cancers in the United States ever had conversations with their healthcare providers about their psychosocial needs. The latest study showing this was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.1

This study was a large population-based study of 1777 survivors participating in the 2010 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) was conducted by researchers at the National Cancer Institute, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

The study examined the level of psychosocial care being provided in clinical practice, following the 2008 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, Cancer Care for the Whole Patient: Meeting Psychosocial Health Needs. The IOM called for identification of patients’ ps