The purpose of this document is to begin to bridge the gap between clinicians' and patients' expectations of how psychosocial services should be used in response to distress screening. The Women's Health and Education Center (WHEC) supports professional organizations with the mission to improve survival and quality of life for cancer patients through standard-setting, prevention, research, education and the monitoring of comprehensive quality care. In 2014, the WHEC approved new standards to promote patient-centered care, an exciting shift driven by research over the past decade showing that patient-centered services improve outcomes. Patient-centered standards include the provision of treatment and survivorship plans, palliative care services, genetic services, navigation programs, and psychosocial distress screening. Given that the popularity of distress screening is increasing exponentially, and begins to bridge the gap between clinicians' and patients' expectations of how psychosocial services should be used in response to distress screening. Key findings and implications for service delivery were: 1) receptivity to referral is a separate issue from that of distress level, 2) strong preference among those who declined psycho-oncology referral to cope on their own emphasized the potential role of self-management interventions, and 3) low social support was a major theme among those accepting referral, suggesting that assessing family support might further contribute to identifying patients in need of additional psychological assessment. Additional studies are needed to further examine, on a large scale, patients' preferences for follow-up care after distress screening. Several different approaches to distress screening are discussed above, and additional studies should examine their comparative acceptability and efficacy.Read More