Effectiveness of a Psychosocial Care Quality Improvement Strategy to Address Quality of Life in Patients With Cancer: The HuCare2 Stepped-Wedge Cluster Randomized Trial

Implementation of Best Practices in Pancreatic Cancer Care in the Netherlands: A Stepped-Wedge Randomized Clinical Trial

Importance

Implementation of new cancer treatment strategies as recommended by evidence-based guidelines is often slow and suboptimal.

Objective

To improve the implementation of guideline-based best practices in the Netherlands in pancreatic cancer care and assess the impact on survival.

Design, setting, and participants

This multicenter, stepped-wedge cluster randomized trial compared enhanced implementation of best practices with usual care in consecutive patients with all stages of pancreatic cancer. It took place from May 22, 2018 through July 9, 2020. Data were analyzed from April 1, 2022, through February 1, 2023. It included all patients in the Netherlands with pathologically or clinically diagnosed pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. This study reports 1-year follow-up (or shorter in case of deceased patients).

Intervention

The 5 best practices included optimal use of perioperative chemotherapy, palliative chemotherapy, pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy (PERT), referral to a dietician, and use of metal stents in patients with biliary obstruction. A 6-week implementation period was completed, in a randomized order, in all 17 Dutch networks for pancreatic cancer care.

Main Outcomes and Measures

The primary outcome was 1-year survival. Secondary outcomes included adherence to best practices and quality of life (European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer [EORTC] global health score).

Results

Overall, 5887 patients with pancreatic cancer (median age, 72.0 [IQR, 64.0-79.0] years; 50% female) were enrolled, 2641 before and 2939 after implementation of best practices (307 during wash-in period). One-year survival was 24% vs 23% (hazard ratio, 0.98, 95% CI, 0.88-1.08). There was no difference in the use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy (11% vs 11%), adjuvant chemotherapy (48% vs 51%), and referral to a dietician (59% vs 63%), while the use of palliative chemotherapy (24% vs 30%; odds ratio [OR], 1.38; 95% CI, 1.10-1.74), PERT (34% vs 45%; OR, 1.64; 95% CI, 1.28-2.11), and metal biliary stents increased (74% vs 83%; OR, 1.78; 95% CI, 1.13-2.80). The EORTC global health score did not improve (area under the curve, 43.9 vs 42.8; median difference, -1.09, 95% CI, -3.05 to 0.94).

Conclusions and Relevance

In this randomized clinical trial, implementation of 5 best practices in pancreatic cancer care did not improve 1-year survival and quality of life. The finding that most patients received no tumor-directed treatment paired with the poor survival highlights the need for more personalized treatment options.

Trial Registration

ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03513705.

Patients' expectations of and experiences with psychosocial care needs in perioperative nursing: a descriptive study

BACKGROUND

Meeting inpatients' psychosocial care needs is essential for their wellbeing, recovery, and positive experiences. This study aimed to describe and compare surgical inpatients' subjective perceptions of the importance of fundamental psychosocial and overall care received.

METHODS

A descriptive study with a convenient sample was conducted from September 2019 to April 2020. A total of 194 surgical inpatients from Norway and Denmark answered a perioperative user participation questionnaire on the day of discharge. The questionnaire was previously face- and content validated. The questionnaire assessed patients' sociodemographic characteristics and four dimensions of fundamental care domains: Psychosocial, Relational, Physical, and System level. This study reports the results from the psychosocial domain. Descriptive statistics including frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations were used to analyze background information variables. The congruency between participants' expectations of and experiences with psychosocial care is presented.

RESULTS

The inpatients expected (and experienced) the healthcare personnel to treat them with respect and dignity, and to be involved and informed throughout their perioperative care. The average ratings regarding these aspects of psychosocial care needs were 72.1-93.8%. There was congruency between patients' perceptions of the subjective importance (SI) of psychosocial fundamental care and their perceived reality (PR) of care. Congruency between high SI and high PR ranged from 59.1 to 92.2%, and congruency between low SI and low PR ranged from 0 to 6.6%. Incongruency between SI and PR varied between 5.9 and 39.6% and was mainly related to higher PR than SI. We found no association between education level, sex, length of stay, age, and patient expectations of or experiences with psychosocial care needs.

CONCLUSIONS

Surgical inpatients in Norway and Denmark experience respectful and dignified treatment, and they feel involved and informed in their perioperative care. It is important to include patient perspectives in further research to avoid missed care and disconnection between what patients prefer and what healthcare personnel plan to do. Understanding patient preferences might also lead to less stress and workload for healthcare personnel.

Screening for Distress in Oncological Patients: The Revised Version of the Psychological Distress Inventory (PDI-R)

Background

Psychological research in oncological settings is steadily increasing and the construct of psychological distress has rapidly gained popularity-leading to the development of questionnaires aimed at its measurement. The Psychological Distress Inventory (PDI) is one of the most used instruments, but its psychometric properties were not yet deeply evaluated. The present studies aimed at investigating the psychometric properties of the PDI (Study 1) and providing a revised version of the tool (Study 2).

Methods

Oncological outpatients were enrolled at the Department of Medical Oncology of the Presidio Ospedaliero of Saronno, ASST Valle Olona, Italy. For the first study (N = 251), an Exploratory Graph Analysis was used to explore the item structure of the PDI. In the second study (N = 902), the psychometric properties of the revised PDI (PDI-R) were deeply assessed.

Results

Study 1 showed that the PDI has a not clear structure and it should be reconsidered. On the opposite, Study 2 showed that the revised version (PDI-R) has a solid factorial structure, it is invariant across gender and age, and it has good psychometric properties.

Conclusion

Results suggest that the PDI-R is a reliable measure of psychological distress in different samples of oncological patients, with stronger psychometric properties than the original version. Its use in the clinical and research field is therefore recommended to improve the quality of both assessment and treatment of psychological distress in patients with oncological problems.