A cross-sectional survey was conducted by a bilingual (Arabic and English) physician and, nurse researcher between December 2014 and December 2016 at a tertiary care, Joint Commission International accredited hospital and a regional oncology referral centre. The validated short form of the SCNS-SF34 was used for the study, primarily because of its feasibility and ease of use and coverage of many of the major domains of unmet needs . The SCNS-SF34 assesses cancer-specific perceived needs across five analytically derived domains: psychological (10 items), health system information (11 items), patient care and support (5 items), physical and daily living (5 items) and sexuality (3 items) . The SCNS-SF34 was provided by Dr. Allison Boyes (University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Australia) . Prior to study commencement, the SCNS-SF34 was translated by a certified legal translator into Arabic, the preferred local language of the patients, and then, back translated into English to ensure the quality of the translation and to ensure that the structure, content and intent of the survey items did not alter during translation. Both the English (n = 14) and Arabic (n = 17) versions were pretested for reliability in the local setting using 31 patients from the oncology outpatient clinic.