Bariere în acordarea serviciilor psihosociale pentru pacienții oncologici din Albania, Republica Moldova, România și Serbia

Abstract

Objective: This research aimed to examine oncologists’ and mental health practitioners’ perspectives on the barriers of providing psychosocial care in the cancer treatment facilities from South-Eastern Europe.Methods: Twenty-eight oncologists and eight mental health practitioners working in four cancer treatment facilities from Albania, Moldova, Romania and Serbia were interviewed and thematic analysis was used to interpret results.Results: Barriers in providing psychosocial oncological care fell under three categories: individual, organizational and cultural barriers. Patient’s poor mental health knowledge, poor cancer related knowledge and negative attitudes towards mental health service use were considered individual barriers together with health practitioners’ poor mental health knowledge and communication difficulties. Lack of available resources in terms of time, equipment, staff and formal training together with heavy workload and a complicated and unstandardized model of care were organizational barriers against psychosocial oncological care. Absence of multidisciplinary collaboration was a cultural barrier participants reported to affect the provision of psychosocial oncological care.Conclusions: Patient education in cancer literacy and mental health literacy combined with health practitioners’ education in psycho-oncology and communication skills and with the development of multidisciplinary teams might be the best solution to rapidly increase the quality of psychosocial care in South-Eastern European countries.

Keywords

• psychosocial oncology care
• barriers
• oncologist
• mental health practitioners
• south-eastern europe.