Background: Cancer disease modifies the order and the nature of needs conne
cted with the state of health. The aim of this study was to evaluate the in
formative, psychological, social and practical needs of hospitalised cancer
patients by means of the Needs Evaluation Questionnaire (NEQ), an instrume
nt designed concisely for the convenience of patients and medical staff.
Patients and methods: Different samples of consecutive hospitalised cancer
patients were involved in the various phases of designing the instrument: 3
0 patients for items identification, 101 patients for completeness and acce
ptability evaluation, 423 patients for construct validity and prevalence of
needs; content and reliability analysis were performed on 2 subsamples of,
respectively, 60 and 88 of the patients from the last sample.
Results: The validation analysis showed rather good reliability, structure
validity and internal consistency of the questionnaire. The prevalence anal
ysis showed that the most common needs were: 'more information about my fut
ure conditions' (74%); 'more information about my diagnosis' (56%); 'more i
nformation about the exams I am undergoing' (52%); 'more explanations on tr
eatments' (51%); 'to have a better dialogue with clinicians' (57%); `better
services from the hospital' (bathrooms, meals, cleaning) (56%).
Conclusions: The NEQ, self-completed by patients, has proven to be a useful
clinical tool for obtaining a systematic and undistorted overview of the p
rincipal needs with respect to the state of health of patients. This instru
ment, which can also be administered by persons not belonging to the health
care system such as volunteers, and inserted into the patients' hospital c
harts, could be used by the medical staff to identify the real needs of pat
ients at an early stage.