Holistic needs assessment and care planning

The complexity of symptoms, needs and concerns experienced by brain tumour patients and their informal caregivers requires a timely and coordinated response from healthcare services and providers. The holistic needs assessment is a systematic way of conducting an overall assessment together with the patient and caregiver, which involves an approach that covers all domains of care. It is imperative that clinical specialists are familiar with the needs, preferences and interests of patients and their caregivers in order to provide the best possible care. Advance care planning involves (together with the patient and their caregivers) thinking about, talking about and planning for the future, including end-of-life decisions. Determining the appropriate timing for these discussions is, however, problematic and is discussed in this chapter. This chapter presents key areas of interest when conducting a holistic needs assessment and emphasises the need to determine the future direction of advance care planning research within neuro-oncology in order to establish evidencebased, best clinical practice.