TY  - JOUR
A1  - Senf, Bianca
A1  - Maiwurm, Paula
A1  - Fettel, Jens
T1  - Attitudes and opinions towards suicidality in professionals working with oncology patients: results from an online survey
T2  - Supportive care in cancer
N2  - To explore and describe attitudes and opinions towards suicidality in healthcare professionals (HCPs) working with oncological patients. Methods: A 48-item online questionnaire was developed and distributed to HCPs working with cancer patients. Three hundred fifty-four answered questionnaires were analyzed. Results: The majority of HCPs reported that they were able to understand why a cancer patient would commit suicide (87.8%) or would seek help from an assisted suicide organization (ASO; 83.9%). The understandable reasons were pain and physical impairments (51.4%), social isolation (19.8%), loss of control and autonomy (18.1%), terminal disease (17.2%), loss of meaning (15.3%), desperation (14.7%), and psychic distress (9.3%). Personal experiences with suicidality lead only 44.8% of HCPs to believe that thereby they would be better able to understand a patients’ wish for suicide. Religion was negatively associated with understanding of suicide and why a cancer patient would seek help from an ASO. Knowledge of suicidality was positively associated with why a cancer patient would seek help from an ASO. Conclusions: There is still little knowledge in oncology about the relation of HCPs’ attitudes toward suicidality in their patients and how those attitudes influence their behavior, especially care and treatment of patients. More research on this topic is needed. It stands to reason that more education about suicidality in cancer patients seems likely to improve understanding and attitudes and thereby influence care for cancer patients.
KW  - Attitude
KW  - Behavior
KW  - Cancer
KW  - Oncology
KW  - Online Survey
KW  - Opinion
KW  - Suicidality
KW  - Understanding
Y1  - 2021
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/64054
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-640544
SN  - 1433-7339
N1  - Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. H.W. & J. Hector Stiftung, Grant/Award Number: Medizinprojekt M64.
VL  - 30
SP  - 1775
EP  - 1786
PB  - Springer
CY  - Berlin; Heidelberg; New York, NY
ER  -