Eindwerk psycho-oncologie 2018-2020: PAT Questionnaire for the Screening of Psychosocial Risk Factors in Pediatric Oncology

Pediatric cancer is now seen as a chronic disease with acute and long-term effects, both physical as psychological. The Psychosocial Standards of Care Project for Childhood Cancer (PSCPCC) developed evidence-based standards for pediatric psychosocial care. Their guidelines included systematic assessments of the psychosocial health care needs of youths with cancer and their family (Wiener, Kazak, Noll, Patenaude, & Kupst, 2015). In 2006, Kazak et al. presented the Pediatric Psychosocial Preventative Health Model (PPPHM), concerning the assessment and treatment of families in pediatric health care.

The Psychosocial Assessment Tool is a questionnaire that assigns the patient and its family to the Universal, Targeted or Clinical risk category from this PPPHM model. In this research, the PAT questionnaire was tested for the first time in Belgium. Together with the PAT, a usability questionnaire was completed by the parents of 55 patients and the multidisciplinary team also made a judgement of the psychosocial risk.

The internal consistency of the total PAT questionnaire was questionable and varied considerably for the subscales (unacceptable to acceptable). The internal consistency was similar to the reliability in the study of Sint Nicolaas et al. (2016), but considerably lower than in the research of Pai et al. (2008) and Kazak et al. (2018). This might be due to limited participants or cultural differences. Furthermore, the numeric PAT and Team scores were significantly related, but the categorical scores were not. Both measurements appeared to have a small overlap but also include supplementary risk factors. Finally, the families rated the usability of the PAT as acceptable.