First impact: Screening program for distress and psychosocial care for newly diagnosed patients and their families

Abstract

The National Comprehensive Cancer Network created in 1997 a multidisciplinar comission whit the aim to examine how integrate the psychosocial attention of cancer patient into the routine assessment of this patients. This group noted that distress, treated as emotional suffer was the best construct to show the variety of concerns experimented by the cancer patients free from the stigma of others concepts used to define emotional symptoms. This paper show the develop of a program called First Impact (Primer Impacto), consisting a psychosocial attention program which intends to respond immediately to all bio-psycho-social needs of newly diagnosed patient and their relatives. The assessment by a simple screening tool (semi-structured interview and the Distress Thermometer) lets us to give the first psychosocial cares. An exhaustive review of the available literature, our experience to present the necessary resources to an adequate implantation of a structured detection of distress protocol, and the results obtained from its implementation in different hospitals and the Spanish Association Against Cancer centers are provided.