TY  - JOUR
A1  - Senf, Bianca
A1  - Maiwurm, Paula
A1  - Fettel, Jens
T1  - Exposure to suicidality in professionals working with oncology patients: an online survey
T2  - Psycho‐Oncology
N2  - Objective: To explore and describe exposure to suicidality in healthcare providers (HCP) working with oncological patients. Special emphasis was put on five central aspects from the HCPs perspective: Exposure, Confidence, Expertise, Distress, and Education.
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: Overall 83.3% of HCPs reported to have encountered at least one suicidal patient in the last year. Feeling confident in talking about suicidality was reported by 72.1% of HCPs, with 71.2% of nurses reporting feeling insecure compared with only 5.1% of psychotherapists. Similarly, 22.3% of HCPs felt overwhelmed when confronted with a patient who substantiated his suicidality during consultation. A lack of personal knowledge concerning suicidality in general and in oncological patients in particular, was reported by 39.6% and 49.8%, respectively. In total, 88.1% of HCPs reported feeling distressed when confronted with suicidality, while 81.1% of participants wanted further education regarding suicidality in cancer patients despite that 73.2% had already received some sort of psycho‐oncology education.
Conclusions: Despite the well‐documented fact of elevated suicide rates in cancer patients, there remain deficits in knowledge, which induce feelings of insecurity and helplessness in HCPs. There is a demand for further education concerning the treatment of suicidal cancer patients. Therefore, special curricula addressing this topic should be devised. A general debate about suicidality in cancer patients could help raise awareness of this problem and generate means of prevention.
KW  - cancer
KW  - confidence
KW  - distress
KW  - expertise
KW  - exposure
KW  - further education
KW  - oncology
KW  - online survey
KW  - psycho-oncology
KW  - suicidality
Y1  - 2020
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/57196
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-571961
SN  - 1099-1611
VL  - 29
IS  - 10
SP  - 1620
EP  - 1629
PB  - Wiley-Blackwell
CY  - New York, NY [u.a.]
ER  -