The Next Challenge for Psycho-Oncology in The Uk: Targeting Service Quality and Outcomes

ABSTRACTS

The acceptance and provision of psychosocial cancer care in the UK is moving forward positively, aided by patient advocacy and psychologically minded healthcare policies. The unfolding challenge now is of targeting the quality and outcomes of clinical psycho-oncology services. This report outlines the clinically led development of UK-focused guidance to challenge psycho-oncology services to achieve and demonstrate their potential. It discusses how the guidance was particularly framed to encourage small, low-resource services, and outlines the potential benefits for patients. Overall, setting ourselves the challenge of quality on the same terms as physical healthcare, we can shape a direct path to achieving parity of esteem in mental with physical healthcare.

KEYWORDS:

• cancer
• guidelines
• mental health
• outcomes
• psychology
• psycho-oncology
• quality

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The author is a member of the British Psychological Society’s Faculty for Oncology & Palliative Care (SIGOPAC) and was the lead editor in this group’s Good Practice Guidance document on Demonstrating Quality & Outcomes in Psycho-Oncology (2015), which this special report describes and references. This document is available from the British Psychological Society’s online store; neither the author nor the faculty receive any financial or other reward from sales of this document. The author has no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.