Are nurses and physicians able to assess which strategies adolescents recently diagnosed with cancer use to cope with disease- and treatment-related distress?

Purpose: It was examined whether nurses and physicians are able to identify whether adolescents with cancer have used certain strategies to cope with disease- and treatment-related distress.

Method: Adolescents (N = 48) were asked whether they had used a number of strategies to cope with disease- and treatment-related distress and, if so, the extent to which they had used these. Nurses and physicians were asked to answer the same questions on behalf of a certain adolescent.

Results: Nurses overestimate the extent to which adolescents use strategies to cope with distress, and neither nurses nor physicians, physicians somewhat more, are successful in identifying the extent to which certain adolescents use strategies.

Conclusion: Health-care staff's possibilities to assess how patients cope with disease- and treatment-related distress should be increased. A number of changes in education and the organization of clinical care, especially with regard to assessing patients' needs, are suggested.