Improving Symptom Assessment in Oncology and Palliative Care: Insights from PRC

Alongside oncologist Astrid Telhaug Karlsson and oncology nurse Bodil Inderhaug from the palliative care team, they discuss the critical importance and practical application of systematic symptom assessment in the palliative care unit at Oslo university hospital. The article highlights the Edmonton Symptom Assessment System (ESAS), a tool used to assess symptoms in cancer and palliative care.

They emphasize that in clinical cancer care, patient concerns can be overlooked or downplayed. This is where tools like the ESAS can be particularly valuable, as Elise Marie Ihler highlights:

“Patients don’t always report every symptom on their own, and if consultations rely solely on clinicians asking questions, important symptoms may go unnoticed.”

However, the team emphasizes that integrating structured assessments with a plan for follow-up care is key to improving symptom management, treatment outcomes, and patient well-being.

Elias David Lundereng stresses the importance of following up on symptom assessments:

“There’s no point in asking a patient to fill out the form and then putting it in a pile of other paperwork. There needs to be a plan for following up on the answers,” he says, adding:

“If the responses are not followed up, patients quickly lose motivation to complete the forms. And I can understand that very well.”

To address this need, MyPath, a PRC-led implementation science project funded by the EU’s Horizon Europe programme, aims to enhance symptom management in cancer care across Europe. Through the development and implementation of a digital solution MyPath will allow patients to report symptoms and care preferences in real time. The patient-reported data will inform personalized care pathways and symptom treatment aligned with evidence-based palliative and supportive care guidelines.

By implementing and evaluating these pathways across European cancer centres, MyPath seeks to transform standard cancer care, ensuring that treatments align with each patient’s unique needs, values, and preferences, making cancer care more patient-centred.

Read more about MyPath here: MyPath – The digital solution to patient-centred cancer care

Read the full article in the Norwegian Journal of Clinical Nursing: The form that makes the assessment more precise: - We want to know how the patients are doing, not how we think they are doing