New Diagnosis Bundle: Improving Care Delivery for Patients With Newly Diagnosed Cancer

A new cancer diagnosis is almost universally disorienting and frightening. It therefore is not surprising that anxiety and depression are highly prevalent among newly diagnosed patients and that the need for cancer care (a high-emotion service) can lead to fear, sadness, and helplessness. Although a cancer diagnosis is not always life ending, it is a life-changing event that triggers an array of often-unmet psychosocial, informational, and physical needs. The level of unmet needs for older patients with cancer, for example, is highest soon after diagnosis and when treatment starts, then decreases over time. The critical period right after patients learn that they have cancer deserves much more attention than it currently receives.