Alyson B. Moadel-Robblee, PhD | Source | Co-Director, Integrative Oncology Program at Montefiore Einstein Comprehensiv...
Alyson B. Moadel-Robblee, PhD
Alyson Moadel-Robblee, Ph.D. is Clinical Professor in the Department of Epidemiology & Population Health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She holds several roles including Director of the Psychosocial Oncology Program, founding Director of the Bronx Oncology Living Daily (BOLD) Program, and Co-Director of the Integrative Oncology Program of the Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care (MECCC), Bronx NY. As a health psychologist, Dr. Moadel applies a career in research, teaching and counseling to her interest in the psychological, social and cultural factors associated with coping with cancer.
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Montefiore Einstein Comprehensive Cancer Center
Co-Director, Integrative Oncology Program
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Dr Alyson Moadel-Robblee on Effective Distress Screening and Support Systems for Patients With Cancer
Alyson Moadel-Robblee, PhD, deputy director of community engagement and cancer health equity at Montefiore Einstein Comprehensive Cancer Center, discussed the center's evolving patient distress screening process and the Bronx Oncology Living Daily support program for patients with cancer.
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Our distress screening process took place probably about 8 to 10 years ago. We started talking with the nurse navigators and the cancer center leadership about implementing the distress thermometer with all of our oncology outpatients. It was quite a fiasco, because it was adding another burden to our nurses, our nurse navigators, that they'd have to administer that on top of everything else they already do in terms of assessment. But they took it on like champs, and the challenges were, first, the burden that they had, because they had to get through so many assessment points. But then, we found that patients were underreporting distress—it just didn't make sense that only 10% or 15% of patients newly diagnosed with cancer were saying they were clinically distressed, so we knew that wasn't right. So, we're still tweaking it. We're still trying to do education. I'm a psychologist, so educating nurses how to introduce the topic with patients on how to ask them about distress and things like that. But they're still underreporting, so now we're giving patients paper and pencil to fill out and do it on their own. We're going to do a pilot QI [quality improvement] project to compare the nurse-delivered vs the patient-administered distress thermometer and see how it goes.
