Managing Psychosocial Distress: Lessons Learned in Optimizing Screening Program Implementation.

Abstract

The estimated prevalence of psychosocial distress in cancer patients is 29.6% to 43.4%. Psychosocial distress is associated with depression, a common comorbidity in cancer patients. Untreated distress can contribute to early morbidity and mortality and can worsen other comorbidities. In 2012, the American College of Surgeons (ACoS) Commission on Cancer (CoC) required accredited cancer centers to integrate psychosocial distress screening into cancer care by the end of 2015. Uptake of screening has been minimal, with only 47% to 73% of eligible patients being screened. The Screening for Psychosocial Distress Program (SPDP) is a 2-year educational and implementation-support program designed to help cancer care clinicians meet the ACoS CoC mandate. Through the SPDP, we have trained cancer care clinicians on how to optimize the distress screening process to increase the likelihood that patients' distress will be detected, evaluated, and triaged. We report here on our "lessons learned" and the optimal strategies to promote institutions' adoption of distress screening.