Clinical specialist nurses at the United Kingdom’s Leeds Cancer Centre have developed an electronic form that “increases the use and quality of holistic needs assessments for cancer patients,” according to a new paper published in The Nursing Times.

Holistic needs assessments, or HNAs, are a key part of the British National Health Service’s (NHS) cancer care protocol. They’re offered free of charge to patients at various points during the course of their cancer treatment, to better determine and address patients’ physical, social and emotional needs.

The Leeds group is concentrating its efforts on late-stage and post-treatment HNAs — their response to a study that found over 30% of the UK’s cancer patients ended treatment with five or more unmet needs.

“Discussion with the CNS teams had highlighted that very few teams were sharing their assessments with primary care colleagues and that, even for colleagues in secondary care, HNAs were not easy to find in the system,” the paper’s author reported.

The group hopes that its new, electronic HNA will improve the needs assessment process and, ultimately, improve outcomes for British patients.

Learn more here, in The Nursing Times.