Acute oncological emergencies may be distressing for patients with cancer and their families and can occur in unfamiliar clinical surroundings. Many people with such emergencies navigate complex healthcare pathways and some centres may lack subspeciality pathways to guide treatment. Clinicians stand to gain from better understanding of patient experiences, as this insight can inform interventions to enhance safety, satisfaction and efficiency of treatment for this patient group.
As such, UK researchers sought to identify core aspects of the care experience important to patients with cancer during an acute oncological episode. By mapping domains of patient experience, they aimed to inform future patient-reported experience measures to ultimately shape service provision.
Using a mixed methods approach, the scoping review covered literature published since the inception of acute oncology as subspecialty in the UK in 2019 through to 2024. A total of 15 articles from 14 unique studies were included, capturing experiences relayed by patients, caregivers and healthcare professionals across varied care settings.
Core issues of importance in the patient experience
The results revealed six interlinked domains: managing emotional distress, including the polarising experience of palliative care discussions; being treated with compassion and respect; deciding when to seek help; hospital environment; quality of care and communication; and discharge planning.
Several issues were unique to emergency cancer care, such as patient distress resulting from uncertainty, deciding when to seek help and the impact of mentioning ‘palliative care’ in urgent and emergent scenarios.
The authors emphasised the value of this study, which has ‘drawn together for the first time the core issues of importance to the experiences of people with cancer, and their carers, when seeking help for oncological emergencies’.
The findings address relevant clinical practice by clarifying gaps in care domains for this patient group. Healthcare providers, hospital administrators and policymakers can apply these findings to assess and continually advance specialist urgent and emergency cancer care services, the authors said.
As such, the next phase of the research involves developing an acute oncology patient-reported experience measures using the domains and subdomains synthesised here, alongside patient interviews.
A feasibility study in a UK acute oncology service will then follow. The study authors noted how this iterative process should enhance the measure’s accuracy and relevance for frontline teams ‘such that specialist urgent and emergency cancer care services are enabled to evaluate and continuously improve’.
Reference
Hurley-Wallace AL et al. Mixed methods scoping review of patients’ experiences of urgent and emergency cancer care. Supportive Care in Cancer. 2025;33:208.
