CN55 - The impact of psychosocial support on the overall health of cancer patients in the COVID-19 era

Background

COVID-19 mainly affected the elderly and people with chronic illnesses. The SUCCEED questionnaire was developed to assess the psychosocial needs of cancer patients in the era of COVID-19. This study aims to demonstrate how psychosocial support affected the health of cancer patients in large multisite cancer centers.

Methods

A total of 559 cancer patients were involved. We used the SF-36 questionnaire where higher values indicate a better general health status and the SUCCEED Questionnaire assessing psychosocial needs, higher scores indicate greater needs. Divergent validity was examined by comparison with the SF-36 questionnaire and analyses included descriptive and logistic regressions statistics.

Results

Cancer patients were mainly female (55.3%) and the mean age was 66.2 years (±11.6). The correlation between psychosocial support (SUCCEED score) and health status (SF-36 score) was negatively significantly correlated and negative: as the level of psychosocial support received decreases, general health also decreases (Pearson'r=-0.140, p < .001). This negative correlation was even stronger when considering the "Psychological-emotional health" domain of the SF-36, where a one-point increase in the SUCCEED score leads to a 0.8-point decrease in psychological-emotional health (Pearson'r=-0.152, p < .001). A negative correlation was found between the SUCCEED domain 'patient concerns' and the SF-36 domain 'psychological-emotional health': when patient concerns decrease, psychological-emotional health improves (Pearson'r =-0.180, p <.001). Also, general health and vitality correlation revealed a negative significant relationship (Pearson'r=-0.147, p<.001). The domain of patients' perceptions is also negatively correlated with psychological and emotional health (Pearson'r =-0.280, p<.005). Age is negatively correlated with SF-36: each additional year corresponds to a decrease of 0.258 points in the total SF-36 score. In contrast, it increases by 11.5 points if the patient receives psychosocial support (p<.001).

Conclusions

Poor psychosocial support negatively affected the health status of cancer patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. Cancer nurses should advocate to better respond to psychosocial patient needs.

Clinical trial identification

Editorial acknowledgement

Legal entity responsible for the study

University of Genoa.

Funding

Has not received any funding.

Disclosure

All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.